#the second page is too saturated it burns my eyes!

[kyuumon]

Last Goodbye

[sxdmoonchxld]

Operation: Pop The Cherry | JJK

Jungkook x Virgin!Reader

Genre: Smut

Warnings: rough bathroom sex, college au, unprotected sex, teasing, fingering, Jungkook has a virgin kink if you couldn’t tell by he title, lowkey sadistic JK, Gay BFF Jimin, mentions of alcohol and weed, brief mention of homophobia. bIG diCK Jungkook, more belly bulging, and I forgot what else

Word Count: 6.1k

Summary: Against you better judgement and thank to your best friend Jimin. You somehow agreed to let a stranger on campus known as the Cherry Popper, too well..pop your cherry.

Alternatively: You're a virgin. Jungkook has a fetish/kink for fucking virgins.

A/N: I guess i’ll keep putting this note until i stop reposting my old stories. I use to be lizardsocial, and this fic was previously called Game. You may still be able to find it somewhere on tumblr. I edited this fic heavily and it’s honestly a new story, but there are still some elements from the fic it used to be still in there. Unedited so please let me know of any mistakes or typos. Like, comment, reblog, let me know what you think. Enjoy!

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Bass boosted pop music seeped through the dense walls of the energetic room. Strobing bright colored beams danced to the rhythm of the music in mesmerizing synchrony. The musty odor of marijuana, booze, and sex-saturated air shrouded the room in a turbid veil, covering the sea of drunken undulating bodies packed in the cramped living room.  Empty beer cans and other various booze bottles mixed with burnt-out blunts accompanied the young adults. You groaned with irritation and disgust. You didn't want to be here, but to your chagrin, you had a promise to keep.

It wasn't a secret that the college nightlife was unquestionably not your type of 'scene.' You quite frequently elected to willingly engage most of your time in your freshman dorm, wrapped in your weighted burrito blanket. A nightstand stockpiled with all your favorite snacks, lights dimmed low, and lavender incense burning, filling your room with the aroma of relaxation. The perfect setting to binge-watch your favorite show for the umpteenth time, the shifting distorted brightness of your computer screen, projecting the scenes against your face. 

It's kind of funny how you got yourself into this mess in the first place. The one time you decide to take the chance and branch away from the alternate antisocial hermit, your personality had adopted as its own had come back to bite you in the ass. You admit, lately, you've been neglecting your best friend. Your reasonings generally varying from the classic 'oh I was sleep' to deliberately silencing your phone, not wanting to hear the constant shrill ringing of the default ringtone. You loved Jimin, you truly did, but you could only take so much of his eccentric mashup of bubblegum and rainbow sparkles that was his personality. Eventually, guilt began eating away at you piece by piece until you ultimately caved in and invited your friend over for an impromptu movie night in your dorm room. 

Not even 30 minutes into the movie, one that you had been dying to see, might you add, Jimin commenced his drunk and high chattering. He had already started 'pre-gaming' before he came over; Six shots of straight Vodka and 2 blunts. Every day you prayed for this man's liver and brain function; with how much he drank and smoke, you would think he needed it to function. 

"Oh! Oh! Bitttch. Did I tell you about that football player, I fucckked last week!" Jimin started slurring on certain words. You noticed his eyes were glossy and glazed over. 

"No, you didn't, Chim." You sighed, completely giving up trying to watch the movie. You would have to watch it on your alone time. 

"Reeaally?" Jimin slurred, a goofy grin uplifting his lips.

"Yes, really. You haven't told me." Amusement lightly coated your voice. 

"Welll, his name is T-tae, Tae-tae something. Hold on, it's coming to me." Jimin said, rubbing the sides of his temples, trying to remember the guys' name. 

"Taehyung! That's it!" Jimin shrieked, snapping his fingers in victory.

You looked at him startled. You remember Taehyung from high school. You didn't recall him being at this college, though. Well, it wasn't like you paid attention to many things outside your bubble anyway.

"Wasn't he homophobic as fuck in high school?" You asked, genuinely interested.

"Yeah, he was. Buttt I guess he was trying to cover up, that he was actually on the DL." Jimin smiled, whispering the last part.

"DL? What's that mean?" You inquired

Jimin looked at you with a look of betrayal. "It means he's on the down-low, meaning he didn't want anyone to know he's gay. Girrl, I'm too crossfaded to be explaining this to you."

You chuckled, " My bad, Chim. So was it good?"

"Fuck, no! Dick was straight trash. The only thing that saved him a little was that his dick was huge." Jimin said, wiping away a pretend tear from the corner of his eye. 

You laughed boisterously at that. If Jimin wasn't so adamant about becoming a professional dancer. He could seriously take up a career in comedy.

"Speaking of dick. When are you gonna get some?" Jimin asked, turning his body to face you completely. As you looked at him, you noticed his eyes seemed a bit clearer, and his face wasn't as red as earlier. Not only did Jimin drink like a fish and smoke like a chimney. He was somehow able to sober just as fast.

"Oh my god, Jimin. Please don't sta-"

"Mmm, no missy," Jimin said, wagging his finger in your face.

"Don't you hear it?" He said, cupping his hand around his ear as if he was straining to hear something.

"Hear what?" You replied, rolling your eyes and crossing your arms against your chest.

"The cobwebs and tumbleweed living in your cunt."

"Jimin!" You shrieked, slapping the arm closest to you.

"Don't Jimin me! You know it's true, I swear you're gonna be a 40-year-old virgin, and by the time you finally make the decision to have sex, it'll be too late!" Jimin yelled, stumbling to stand up from the couch.

"First off, ouch. I won't be a 40-year-old virgin. That's very insulting. Second, I do plan to lose it soon. I just haven't found the time or the right guy." You said, looking down at your feet shyly. You did want to lose your virginity, but with being an introvert with a mix of social anxiety and just a dash of seasonal depression for added flavor. It was hard even to get out of bed sometimes. Much less going out and trying to find someone to do the do with.

"Oh! Well, if that's all, then I got you covered, babe. Time? Next week Friday at Jihyo's dorm. As for the right guy, I know a dude. He has like a kink for that kind of thing." Jimin answered nonchalantly, now scrolling through his phone, probably on his social media page.

You looked at Jimin, head tilted to the side, confused. "What kind of thing?"

"Oh, you know fucking virgins and shit. Popping their cherries." He said, popping his "P's."

You sputtered, exasperated. What the fuck. You didn't kink shame, that was for losers, but he can't seriously expect you to do something like that.

"What the actual fuck. Jimin, are you serious?"  

"Deadly." He said, looking you square in your eyes. His tone of voice haven dropped an octave lower.

"Jimin no. I-i can't."

"Jimin, yes! Err, I mean _____ yes, you can! Come on, it's a once in a lifetime experience. Plus, it's not like he's a total stranger. I've known him since he was 8 years old. I use to babysit the little shit head." Jimin said, waving his hand in the air, trying to swat away a rogue fly.

"Wow, Chim. You know, now that you put it like it makes me feel a lot better about the situation." You said tone dripped in sarcasm

"Really?" Jimin squealed, a delighted twinkling in his eye.

"Of course not! Don't be stupid!" Offended, you gawked at Jimin. You swear sometimes he could be so dimwitted.

"Come on, please? At least meet him, and if the vibe is not right, then you can leave no harm done." Jimin pleaded, his attention back on you. Was it crazy that you were actually thinking about agreeing to this? Jimin did have a point. It was sort of a once in a lifetime opportunity. He did know the guy, and if you didn't like the vibe, then you could just bounce, right? Right?

Sighing in defeat, your hands dragged down your face and turned towards a pouting Jimin. Grabbing at his deflated shoulders, you shook her lightly, and with urgency in your voice, you spoke, "Alright goddammit! I'll do it, but you have to stay by my side the whole time, no running off, you understand!" 

You watched Jimin's face quirk into a sly smirk. You swore you could see the cogs in his brain churning. Damn, you were going to regret this. You had the tendency to make deals when pressured. Most of the time, those agreements ended up backfiring on you, confining you in the proverbial rock and a hard place. 

"Yay! Operation: Pop _____ Cherry has commenced. Okay, so will meet at the auditorium on the art campus. From there we will walk to Jihyo's dorm, it's only five minutes. Promise me you'll actually show up and won't flake on me." A complacent expression rested arrogantly on Jimin's features, a single pinky finger extended towards you. 

"Don't give this situation a not-so-secret code name. And I can't believe I'm saying this but, I promise." You agreed, interlocking pinky fingers, yours thumbs coming up to press against one another.

"So I'll meet you at the location Friday, don't be late, and wear something sexy. No granny clothes." he chirped, making his way to your front door.

"Wait! You're leaving already?" you frowned, looking at the clock on your wall. He's only been here for an hour, and 30 mins of it were spent persuading you to hurry up and lose your virginity. You didn't even get to finish the movie together.

"Sorry babe, but I have a dick appointment." he shrugged, putting his arms through the sleeves of his jacket.

"Can you at least tell me the name of the guy who's supposed to fuck me?" you huffed, honestly you were done for tonight. As soon as Jimin left, you were heading straight for bed.

"Oh yeah, how could I forget." Jimin slaps the center of his forehead. "He's a real cutie. I would fuck him if he wasn't as straight as an arrow." Jimin looks off to a far wall, eyeing it with jealousy.

"Just tell me his name, please." You pleaded. Oh yeah, that's definitely a headache forming. You could feel it already. Jimin snaps out of his daydreaming and spins his body towards you.

"Jungkook."

Time skip to a week later, and precisely as you suspected, what a mistake that whole conversation was. Now here you were at this fucking dorm party with people you didn't know or care to get to know. Jimin had left you as soon as he saw his next piece of ass. Restlessly you hauled down the short black dress that insisted on riding up your ass, the soles of your feet protesting in the slim heeled shoes. Floundering your way into the packed building, you couldn't help but query where Jungkook was. Jimin was supposed to get around to send you a picture of the mystery man, but that never happened. Funny how now was the best time you decided to question why exactly Jimin was your best friend.

"Well damn, the pictures Jimin sent me doesn't do you justice at all. You're fucking hot." You recoiled from the closeness of the voice, the heated breath sending chills skittering down your spine, and the hairs on the back of your neck ramrod straight. Heat spurred to your face when you whisked around to meet an absolutely gorgeous guy. Like unfairly gorgeous guy. You stared wide-eyed, taking in his chiseled facial features, paired with wide doe eyes and bunny smile decorating his face. Somehow, someway he's mastered looked soft and sexy at the same damn time. And fuck was that a dangerous combination for your pussy. Your heart too, but more so your cunt.

"U-uh, thanks? Who are you exactly?" You watch as he recoils back from your with a look of apprehension on his face.

"A-are you not ____?" he stutters cutely. You think you can see the beginnings of a blush burning his cheeks. You nod your head once to confirm his question. He stared at you a minute longer before you see the recognition spark in his chocolate orbs.

"Jimin didn't send you my picture did he?" Shaking his head with his eyes close, you get the courage the scan his face a bit more. Yeah. He's definitely blushing.

"Sorry. I guess seeing you here, I thought Jimin would have...prepared you better." Shaking your head from side to side because your words refused to come out. You watched as he backed up a bit further from your personal space and thrust his right hand out to you. 

"The name's Jungkook, or J.K. Whatever suits your taste."

With clammy hands, you taking his outstretched hand marveled at how it almost covers your hand. Now that he's moved back from you, you now had to chance to see how tall he really was. Maybe about 6 to 7 inches taller. You look down at his feet and eye his combat boot, perhaps a little shorter but still taller. And big, yeah, definitely bigger. His oversized black jacket did little to hide the broadness of his shoulders and chest. You let your eyes travel down the length of his body. You bet he's hiding some killer abs under his shirt. And holy fuck, his thighs.

"You like what you see, baby girl?" Teasing, he's teasing but God, if his voice didn't make you pussy throbbing pathetically. Whimpering slightly, you let out a meek "Yes." God, you hope he didn't hear that.

Much to your dismay, he did, hear you. How he heard you with the music as loud as it was, was a mystery to you. But you watched his pupils dilate, and his nostrils flare slightly. Jungkook tucks his bottom lip between his teeth as his eyes rake up and down your scantily clad body. His heated stare scrutinized across your body, intrigue exerting over him, as he analyzed the way the snug-fitting dress molded to the curves of your shape. He could tell you didn't do this often. His dick twitched in his jeans with enthusiasm. 

It's the increase in pressure of your hand that makes you realize you're still holding his hand. You go to retract your hand from his. However, yelp shrilly as he tugs you closer to his body. Both hands now resting on his chest, and his wrapped around your waist. Fuck, you could feel the warmth and coarseness of his hands through your thin dress. A spontaneous tremor racked your body. The heat-transmitting from his frame mixed with the floral yet musky undertone of his cologne made you somewhat featherbrained.

"Fuck, you're so soft." You squeak as he squeezes your waistline, pulling you even closer against his body. You were now putty in his hands.

"Jimin told you my....preferences, right?" his voice caressed your ear. Just a slight movement or subtle twitch, and his lips would be on your skin.

"Y-yeah, he did." It should be an embarrassment how frail and breathless you sounded, but that didn't matter.

Jungkook hid his smile behind your ear. This was just too easy. Just how he liked it. He almost felt bad- almost. He was gonna ruin you utterly and completely, mold the shape of cock in the walls of your pussy. His name spilling from your lips, voice going hoarse by how loud he would make you scream. Fuck he couldn't wait. He's had virgin's before, a lot of them. That's his whole M.O. The cherry popper, virgin fucker, whatever. Jungkook's heard all the names in the book. But there's just something about you, you just had an air of genuine innocence, and he couldn't wait to defile it. 

Jungkook pulls his head back, enough to where his eyes can trail over the bared skin of your neck, and the sprinkling of perspiration sparkling off the bright strobing lights, no doubt from nervousness. His tongue traced over his thin upper lip, watching the droplets of sweat spiral down the curve of your neck. He wanted to taste you. 

"Alright, then." He jerks his body away from you. You're no longer touching his chest, but his hands are still on your waist. 

"Let's enjoy the party before the fun really begins. Every done body shots before?" Jungkook spoke casually, undeterred by the way you recoiled back or the look of stupor on your face.

"W-what? B-body shots, why?" you squeaked, failing to keep from stuttering over your words. Is this how it's supposed to go? Is this normal? You're bewildered, and just a bit perturbed. Were you just imagining that sexual tension that was going on just moments ago? For sure, you thought Jungkook was gonna throw you over his shoulders and haul you off to the nearest unoccupied bedroom or bathroom. At that instant, you didn't care. 

Jungkook regarded the war of emotions wage across your features, merriment and strobing lights twinkling in his eyes. Fuck, you were cute, so desperate staring up at him with a pout on your face a puppy dog eyes. He could honestly just take you back to the closest room and fuck the shit out of you. But he wanted to play with his prey, a bit more. The wait made it that much more satisfying.

"Don't pout too much, baby girl or I may not be able to contain myself. Follow me. The table is this way."

Jungkook didn't indulge in answering any of your questions you rambled off at him, delighted to see you trailing on his heels like a lost pup. Jungkook directed you further into the dorm, and like a dog on a leash, you followed. In the center of a sparse room sat a scraped up black table. You observed the area. It was devoid of many people. The several that were present made no recognition of your proximity in their intoxicated state.

"So who's first?" Jungkook asked, setting the bottle of tequila, rim salt, and limes down on the table.

"U-uh, I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter." You shrugged hesitantly. You were way out of your element here.

"Perfect then, you first." Jungkook should be ashamed by how excited he was at getting to sample your skin. It looked smooth, felt soft when he had you in his arms, and would no doubt probably taste as sweet as it seemed. You nodded in docility, wandering over to crawl on top of the table, being attentive to your dress. You lay flattened against the table, shiverings racking your body as he began pouring a trail of salt between your cleavage. 

He poured himself a shot in the depression of your throat and tore the lime in half with his bare hands. Smirking at how you flinched when he thumped the liquor bottle down beside your head. Jungkook pushed the other half of the unevenly split lime towards your lips, a silent gesture to take the lime in your mouth. Jungkook watched as your lips curled gently around the hull of the green citrus. A flare of lust stirred in his loins at the action. He couldn't wait to see your lips stretched around the head of his cock. He observed your eyes clamped closed as he began dropping his head forward to your chest. It was adorable and innocent. He noted the way your lips slackened around the citrus in your mouth, your chest heaving in speed, the closer his tongue trailed to your neck.

You tasted splendid, just as sweet as he thought. The salt on your skin did nothing to deter your natural flavor. If anything, it enhanced your sweetness, rendering your skin damn near mouth-watering. Jungkook's ears perked at the breathless moans slipping past the fruit perched against your lips, drawn out by the repeated pass of the wet, pink appendage lapping at the salt line between the valley of your breast. Committing your muffled moans to memory, he lapped persistently at the collection of salt and tequila in the hollow at the base of your neck.

You face flammed in embarrassment as panting moans effortlessly tumbled from your mouth. Who knew your chest and neck was such an erogenous spot. Despite your shame, you couldn't stop wriggling, shifting your thighs together for some form of friction to sate the rising arousal dampening your panties. You yelped at the sensation of blunt teeth nibbling at your skin before soft lips came to suck at the shallow indentations. Fluffy hair with an undercut came into your line of vision as Jungkook lifted his head up to your lips. Your heart stammered tortuously against your ribs, flirtatious eyes stared lidded with searing lust, his head advanced closer to your lips. Your eyes fluttered closed, lips puckering against the bitter hull of the lime.

Jungkook closed the distance, slanting his mouth over the lime, blocking his contact with yours. He sucked against the sour fruit, acidity puckering his lips, residual tartness flowing to your cracked lips. Jungkook withdrew from your mouth, taking the drained lime hull with it. Your saccharine moans were heaven to his ears. It had awoken something inside him, fueled his fire in knowing that possibly no one had ever heard such a sweet sound. He wanted more, craved more. 

"Have you ever been kissed before, sweetheart?" Your eyes followed the movement of his tongue, poking out to moistening his lips. 

"Yeah, once in like 3rd grade." Who hasn't snuck behind a tree or hid underneath the dark coverings of playground equipment to lock lips with a childhood crush?

He grinned salaciously, body moving to rest between your spread legs. Oh, now he was really excited. Your lips were practically untouched. Just another part of your body to claim first. You jumped when palms pressed flat against the revealed skin of your thigh. Gently, Jungkook rubbed lazy circles on your skin, never lowering or furthering than the hem of your dress. He felt you wiggle beneath his hands, observed your eyes, glimpsing―darting about, should you concentrate on his face, or his hand, uncertainty was etched on your face.

"Amazing." He groaned, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks, before grinning again. His face inched closer to yours, his lips but a breath apart, warmth flickered against your lips as he talked, level and smooth. " Well, how about I become your second?

And then his lips were on you, the soft muscle mangled itself to your lips, tentative and sluggish to give you a chance to register his mouth slanted upon yours. Jungkook chuckled against your lips at your unresponsiveness. He guesses you were a little shell shocked. It only takes a few more stagnant seconds before you're shyly reciprocating his kiss. Delicate, shaky movements highlighted your inexperience. Increasingly, Jungkook increased the pressure behind lips, his hands spreading to enclose around your waist, dragging you closer against him. One of Jungkook's hands removed from your waist to bury itself in your hair, gently his fingernails scratched against your scalp, an airy moan was his reward. 

Hands completely abandoning your midsection, one gripped the meat of your thigh, pulling you to the edge of the table, flush against the tent of his denim jean encased manhood, the other embedded in your strands pulled sharply on your roots, a loud gasp tearing from you. Jungkook took that opportunity to advance his tongue into your gaped mouth. His tongue wrapped itself around yours, briefly wrestling for dominance before easily pinning your tongue in submission. His hips ground against yours, the heat of your covered core teased him through his jeans. 

He thoroughly explored your mouth, swallowing the now copious cries leaving your mouth. Reluctantly, Jungkook tore himself from your kiss-swollen lips. The ravished looked suited you perfectly. You looked beautiful, thighs brazenly spread, eyes glazed over in lust, your sticky chest heaving from the length of the shared kiss. Even in the dim lights, he could make out the taunt pebbling of your nipples. 

Your mouth gaped wide, flapping about like a fish out of water, trying despairingly to draw air into your lungs. Your first kiss definitely didn't compare to this much. Your wide eyes flicked between Jungkook and the floor, your bottom lip tucked firmly between your teeth, feeling shy as he just stares at you. Releasing your teeth from your lips, you timidly touched your mouth, admiring how plump they've gotten from the intense liplock.

Wordlessly Jungkook hitched you over his shoulder, winded with a grunt as his defined shoulder blades dug into your stomach and what sounded like a growled vibrate up into you. You squirmed lightly in his hold, scared he was going to drop you, and secondly, your panty-clad ass on display for the party-goers, not that anyone was looking. 

You watched the continuous panels of hardwood floor move beneath you as Jungkook carried you to an unknown destination. You couldn't believe you were really doing this. Were you actually going to have sex with a complete stranger? Someone who was known for explicitly fucking virgins. Realistically, you should be ashamed, yet, you conceded full control to him without a second thought. What did that say about you? About your character? Would you now be labeled as 'easy' or a 'hoe' after all this was done? What was going to happen between you and Jungkook? 

The flick of a switch stirred from your thoughts. You shield your eyes with your hand at the bright lights pouring into the room, or rather a bathroom. Jungkook loved the confusion marring your features. He wouldn't fuck you in his bedroom just yet. That was a privilege you would have to earn, no matter how intrigued he had become with you. There's always humiliation to be had in the corruption of innocence, and fucking you in the bathroom was a good start. He planned on making you watch him as he destroyed your body, popping your cherry, stretching your tight virginal hole to accommodate his length, and claimed it as his own. Jungkook shuddered at the thought, his possessive nature taking a turn for the worst. 

Impatiently Jungkook sat you on top of the bathroom sink counter, his lips smashed against yours, the previous tenderness was gone, vanished into a puff of smoke. Teeth banged, and tongues flailed recklessly against each other in the heat of passion, with you struggling to keep up with the demands of his dominating kiss. Thick fingers trailed beneath the hem of your dress, tickling the expanse of your thighs. Jungkook wasted no time in shifting your slick soaked panties to the side, a warm digit gliding effortlessly through your damn folds.

"Fuck, you're already so wet. You're enjoying this a little too much, baby girl." Jungkook growled, panting against your lips. His finger breached your sex, you tensed deftly around the foreigner intrusion, stretching your weeping walls. 

"Ah, Jungkook." You cried listlessly, rocking your hips against his stilled finger. He felt so good inside you, and it was just his finger. Maybe this experience wouldn't be as bad as you heard. Now you couldn't wait to see what his cock felt like embedded deep within your pussy. Jungkook pumped slowly, eventually introducing a second finger to help loosen you up more. You were gonna be a tight fit, very tight, but that just made it even better. You hissed at the slight burn as he began scissoring his fingers apart with each withdrawal. Your hands wrapped around his neck as you buried your head against his broad chest, your mellifluous moans suppressed by the fabric of his shirt. 

"G-go faster, please." You begged, your body adjusting and quickly becoming frustrated by the snail's pace his fingers were pumping. You bucked your hips against his hands, hoping he would ease the growing discomfort boiling in your stomach. 

"Have you ever had an orgasm before, babe?" You nodded eagerly at his question, whining as you bucked against his hand again.

"Oh, really? Who gave it to you." Slow, he was going too slow you wanted, no you needed more friction, more stimulation from him.

"M-me. I-i did." Jungkook loved how you stuttered, it stroked his ego and filled him with arrogance to know it was him, and only that was capable of making you stumble over your words.

"Mmm, and how did you do it? Did you rub this little clit of yours raw?" You cried louder when his thumb flicked at your clit, the stimulation further drawing the appendage from its hood.

"Or did you fuck this tight hole, with these tiny fingers of yours?" At those words, a loud, choked moan, even muffled by your face in his chest, echoed throughout the white bathroom. Jungkook had gone deeper inside, almost to the third knuckle. Another moan left your lips as he twisted his fingers inside you, his palm now facing upwards.

"Though you and I bought know they couldn't possibly reach deep enough to touch the spot you really want." It's euphoric, no better yet orgasmic, the sheer shock of electric pleasure that zaps through your body when he finds the spongy bundle of nerves. Your body jerked heavily, legs go to snap close, only to be stopped by his broad body between your thighs.

He chuckles softly, stroking your thigh with his other hand. Jungkook shifts his head down, bringing his mouth closer to your ear. He exhales quietly, warm air tinged with tequila and lime caresses the light hairs on you around your ear. " I found it, huh?"

You whimper, rubbing your head up and down against his chest.

"You want me to speed up the pace, sweetheart?" Jungkook's voice is delicate now, so gentle. But you're confused, overwhelmed, and scared. It's never felt like this when you did it yourself. Your not sure if you could handle the feeling, so you don't provide an answer to Jungkook's question.

"Don't ignore me ____, that's not nice manners. I'll ask again." You clench around his fingers as Jungkook inches just a bit deeper. 

"Do you. Want me. To go faster?" With each pause, he arches his fingers in a 'come here' motion, pressing deeply against your bundle of nerves, the sensation of having to pee accompanied with each thrust.

 "Y-yes, faster, more. Pl-lease." Fuck, you sounded so pretty begging for him if he wasn't addicted before. You had him sprung now. Jungkook buried his face in the crook of your neck, the sharp smell of tequila and salt still lingering on your skin. He sucked at the junction where your shoulder and neck met. You bucked harder against his fingers, your juices now dripping to coat his palm is sticky cream.

"If you wanted more. Why didn't you just ask?" Jungkook said deviously. Confused, you felt withdraw his sticky digits, walls gripping to stop their departure. Without warning, Jungkook flipped you over onto the counter, your knees buckled at the sudden change in position. Your faced burning at your displayed state, droplets of your essence dribbled from your pussy, slicking up your inner thighs. You yelped as Jungkook grasped at the length of your hair, pulling back pointedly, your neck craned back to observe him addressing you in the mirror.

"You've been wondrous for me ____. Such a sweet girl." He expressed, his empty hand disappearing behind your perked ass to fiddle with the groin of his pants. 

"Truly, you have. Your response and reactions to my touch have really gotten me riled up. It's been a while since I've tittered on the edge of losing control." You wheezed, starting to panic as you felt the thick head of his cock slap teasingly against your slicked throbbing hole. Oh, God, he's huge. Jungkook's cock might just tear you apart. You shifted your hips forward, pressing against the cold marble of the bathroom counters door.

"I-i don't think, I can t-take it Jungkook, you're too b-big. It's my first-time, r-remember?” Your stuttering worse now, but you're scared.

Jungkook pulls your hips back with the hand the was grasping his length, the side of your hip now coated in his pre-cum. His hand lays flat in the crease of your back, forcing you into a perfect arch. 

"You can take it, all of it. And don't worry, of course, I remembered your fragility. I'll go slow, I promise." You plead silently with your eye contact through the mirror. 

"You ready?" You nod once an advert your eyes down to the sink.

Your mouth shakily falls agape as he slowly began pushing the head of his cock into you. It burns, but not as bad as you had anticipated. You take the chance to look back up into the mirror, adamant about giving Jungkook a thankful smile for his gentleness. That vision that greets looks like it jumped right off the page of your favorite erotic story. 

Jungkook's got his head thrown back, the edge of his t-shirt clenched tightly between his teeth, your eyes trail the drip of sweat that follows the curve of his jawline. You have a clear view of his abs all the way down to the v-cut of his hip, to the happy trail that leads to a neatly trimmed bush of pubic hair. You clench tightly around him, efficiently aroused by the view. You feel his cock throbbed heavily inside you, even getting bigger if possible.

"You like that, sweet girl? You like seeing me struggling to contain myself because you're so tightly around me. This little pussy trying to milk me for all I can give you." You love it. You feel powerful in a way. Do you really feel that good around him?

"Yes." Jungkook draws out the 'S.' 

"You feel amazing, so warm and wet. I wished you could see how coated in white you've got me, and I'm not even all the way in yet."

You scream soundless as he bucks into you, shoving in half of his length. It doesn't hurt anymore. You just feel stuffed full. Lifting a trembling hand, you take the chance a feel the lower part. You noticed swelling that wasn't there before, intrigued; you push down against it, moaning in shock you realize it's Jungkook's cock. 

"Yeah, baby girl, that's all me, well, most of me. You ready to take the rest?"

"Yes! Please!" That's the clearest you've been all night. You don't get an answer as Jungkook immediately picks up his pacing, thrusting into you faster. He wastes no time pumping deeply into your tight pussy, his tip smashing against the entrance to your cervix as you pant and grit your teeth in slight discomfort, overshadowed by pleasure. The burning sensation is back as he fucks in deeper with each brutal and swift stroke. But you don't care cause it still feels amazing. You can hear yourself, sloppy and soaking wet, echoing throughout the bathroom. You're drooling down his pistoning cock. You can feel it dripping down your inner thighs. Your head jerks violently against your shoulders, to weak support your head from his menacing thrust. 

Tightened vocal cords released strained shrieks of praise; from your mouth, drool dripping from your lips, into the sticky cleavage of your breast, and sweat coated your skin. The coil in your stomach was quickly tightening, never had you felt anything so deep inside you. If you ever had sex with anyone else, they would never compare to Jungkook.  You were fucked both figuratively and literally.

Jungkook pulled you further from off the sink, the new position allowing him even deeper. You clawed at the marble tops underneath your fingers, your eyes rolling in the back of your head. That sensation of having to pee is back again.

"J-K, I-m. I have to-," You don't get to finish as the band in your stomach snapped. Silently you announced your release; if it wasn't for the new wave of cum coating his cock, or the fluttering tightness of your walls, Jungkook might have missed your orgasm. He wasn't far behind you. The constant clenching of your ridged walls around his cock, had him reaching his limit sooner than he would like. Jungkook had half a mind to pull out but decided to gamble his odds. You're the first person he's fucked raw in a while, and with three deep thrusts later, he was shooting his hot seed right against your cervix. 

Breathing heavily, Jungkook lets you fall against the sink, observing as you crumpled against the sink countertop. Pride swelled his chest as he watched his seed bubble out of your well-used hole. He's never contemplated going farther with the virgins he fucked. He wouldn't make any hasty decisions now though there were still a lot of things he wanted to do with you. He would sleep on it and revisit the idea in the morning.

"So would you say, Operation: Pop Your Cherry was a success?"

You giggled, winded, still having difficulty catching your breath. You straighten up against the bathroom counter, the majority of your weight still resting on the object as you had yet to regain the feeling in your legs.

"Jimin and his stupid code names. I swear when I get a hold ass, he's dead." You warned already preparing your revenge on your best friend. You stare at Jungkook in the eyes through the mirror, smile a bit goofy, you say.

"Operation: Pop My Cherry. Mission complete."

[undersero]

So Well

this is my contribution to march magic, the server collab for @buttershouse

please note: i originally chose for my work to take place during sengoku period japan, but overall there is little significant or identifying factors to support this, so generally it's more of an old world au.

pairing: shinsuke kita x fem reader

warnings: arranged marriage (but kita and reader are in love bc i'm a sap), unprotected vaginal sex, gushing, era-appropriate mentions of the gods/ a higher power, passing mention of era-appropriate expectations regarding sex, flirty and playful kita

word count: 3.2k

**this work is intended for 18+ audiences only. minors do not interact. do not repost this work.**

Kita is a very gentle, loving husband. His hands, calloused from work, always touch you tenderly. Fingertips graze your cheeks as he gazes at you, eyes full of fondness. Soft, sturdy palms smooth over your hair as you lay your head on his chest. Heavy, meaningful nudges as he slides his arms around your waist and smooths his hands up over your breasts. Strong and capable arms tug you into his side while you lay in your bed, being surrounded by his warmth and comfort.

He does little things for you, too. Kita loves preparing your tea for you in the afternoon. It’s never anything special, simple Jasmine tea with a dollop of honey, but he takes great pride in making it for and presenting it to you. He easily reaches tall things and can move things that your arms cannot securely move. More often than you’d initially ever expected, Kita flirts with you- little winks, sometimes he pokes your ticklish sides, tugs affectionately on your hair, kisses the top of your head, bumps your noses together gently.

Kita, who is still so stuck in his ways and his routine, so carefully and lovingly fit you into it so seamlessly it was as if you’d been there all along. He took time for you, to acclimate you into what life on the farm was like; and it was here, amongst all the patience and kind, reassuring smiles, that you truly fell in love with him.

Each morning and each evening, he goes through the garden with you, picking what’s ripe, plucking weeds as needed, and watering. It’s quiet, as things normally are when there’s work to be done, but it’s never awkward. It’s more comfortable than you could have ever imagined. Love doesn’t need constant chatter, and for the two of you, silence works just as well.

Kita is a supportive, loving husband. You couldn’t have chosen a better one if you’d been given the chance.

And if you had been given the chance, if you got to keep what you knew about Kita, you’d pick him every time.

One year ago, when all this started, when you met your future husband for the first time, you were indifferent about the arrangement, and so was he. Being married wasn’t about love or desire, not in the world you two lived in; instead, being married solely revolved around connections, prestige, and social standing. The only silver lining you’d allowed yourself to hope for was that your future husband would be handsome.

And he was. When you first saw him, you were taken aback by his features. You adored and continue to enjoy the direct, honest way he looked at you, how he carried himself with such pride and reliability. The first time you held his hand, feeling it so warm and rough, but gentle all the same, it felt like you’d simply float away, up into the clouds. It was nice. It comforted you, and comfort in love was a luxury you hoped for, but one you never thought you could afford.

One year… it seems both like a lifetime and a second. But now you couldn’t imagine yourself being anywhere else, or being with anyone else. The choice to marry Kita was never yours, but it was one you would make again and again if you could.

Kita, a man of honest words and sometimes hurtful truths, would pick you over and over, too. It was like the gods had been watching you both your whole lives and wove your fates together as a blessing to you both.

Presently, the night is dark and quiet. Millions of stars shine overhead, and a light breeze rustles the broad, green leaves of the trees surrounding your home. Fireflies flicker in the fields and insects chirp. In the distance, an owl hoots. Your barn is closed up for the evening, and from within comes the soft, distant sounds of your resting livestock. All is calm and quiet.

Soft sheets whisper against your bed as Kita pulls them back and slides in next to you. You know he’s in a mood, a playful one, when he gently tugs your book from your hands, careful to slide the bookmark back inside so you don’t lose your page. Even when he’s being frisky, he’s thoughtful, and this fact is just as exciting to you as the way he starts kissing your cheek and rubbing your sides.

“Hope I’m not interrupting,” he mumbles, sliding his lips over to yours. You smile against his lips, sliding your hands through his soft hair and tugging, just a little, at the nape of his neck.

“Only a little bit,” you tell him, giving his hair another tug as he groans at the first one. You nudge your noses together before continuing, “but something tells me you aren’t bothered that you interrupted. Not really, at least.”

He hums thoughtfully, as if considering what you’ve said, though you both know fully well that not only did he know he was interrupting, he’d planned on it and fully intended to do so.

“How lucky I am to have such a smart wife who knows me so well,” he says, sliding his hands over your hair.

“Shinsuke, you flatter me,” you chide, heat blossoming through your body as your heart flutters.

“It’s only a portion of what you deserve, dear.”

“Is that so?” you ask, voice quivering the tiniest bit around the edges. Anticipation sets in.

“Mmmm, it is,” he hums, kissing along your face once again before kissing down to the side of your throat, nosing at your pulse and using a gentle but heavy hand to tilt your head to grant him more access to the soft, delicate skin.

“Care to indulge me?” he asks against your throat, “Let me give you more?”

Your heart pounds harder in your chest and suddenly, the space between you and your husband is too vast. You need him closer, more immediate, you need to feel his skin against yours and his mouth on every part of your body.

“How could I say no when you ask so nicely?”

Your voice comes out like a whisper, it’s shaky and needy in a way you’ve only discovered with this man, with your husband, in your bed. Kita slides on top of you, your book tumbling to the floor with a thump and the noise falling on deaf ears. He quickly slides one of his thighs between yours and captures your mouth in a loving, needy kiss.

His lips are soft, but slightly chapped, a side effect from working long hours in the sun. The way his mouth molds to yours is like a dream, something that brings butterflies to your belly, especially when he’s on top of you like this. It’s something you never expected to enjoy, and never expected to desire.

“You,” Kita murmurs, pulling away just enough to speak, his lips moving tantalizingly against yours, “are such a sweet little thing. My sweet little wife.”

Your cheeks burn as shyness washes over you like a tidal wave. By some stroke of luck, Kita doesn’t dwell on this or the adorable way you get so shy when he speaks so sweetly to you. Instead, he presses his lips against yours once more, kissing you with more urgency than he had been.

His hands, both gentle and rough, slide up underneath your night shirt, caressing your sides. You arch your back slightly, sharply inhaling as his hands softly grope the swell of your breasts, thumbs circling the peaking nipples.

He smiles so wide when you whimper that it breaks the kiss.

“You sound so lovely,” he whispers to you, nudging your noses together. The tenderness in the moment and his action makes you shiver, the trill in your spine increasing as Kita slides a hand out from under the fabric of your shirt and tilts your chin up to meet his gaze.

It’s private and intimate, the way he’s looking at you. His cheeks are a little pink, partially from the sun, partially from the close proximity to you. Your husband’s eyes are dark with excitement and anticipation, though he still looks at you with such warmth and devotion that it’s easy to forget, as you so often do, that you hadn’t picked this man for yourself. But you would, again and again. And he’d pick you.

“I wish you could see yourself as I see you,” he murmurs, more for his own benefit than for yours, as he strokes your face tenderly with his fingertips. Finally, you find your voice.

“I was thinking the same thing about you,” you say, a nervous smile pulling at your lips. “You deserve to see...how… good and wonderful I think you are.”

He smiles again. Your heart stops.

Kita, your loving, gentle husband, always makes love to you. He doesn’t fuck you, he doesn’t have sex with you. He makes love to you, and that distinction is hugely important, though it’s not something either of you really address or talk about. You were his first. He was yours, as was expected, and as was appropriate and respectable.

He touches you with the utmost adoration, each moment your skin is touching is saturated in love and devotion. Kita is careful to make every thrust, every kiss, every touch meaningful, and he never fails. He excels when it comes to making you feel good, when it comes to making you feel like you matter, that you’re the center of his world, even though you’d only wandered into it barely a year ago under circumstances beyond either of your controls.

Kita loves you, he’s gentle with you, but that doesn’t mean he loves you any less hard; if anything, it only makes his love for you more potent, and when he shows you, it’s something so beautiful and pure that you can’t question it, not even if you wanted to. Kita loves you. You know this. You love Kita, and he knows.

Tonight is no different.

As your night shirts come off with the whisper of soft cotton on skin, and as Kita presses his torso against yours, warmth encompasses you. Warmth from proximity, from his sun-kissed skin, from your own love and adoration, and from the butterflies filling your gut. This is neither the first nor the last time your husband makes love to you, but it’s thrilling, as always. Exciting. New. Exhilarating.

Kita smells clean, like soap. He takes great care to wash each day when he returns from the fields; the soft, mild scent fills your nostrils as Kita starts working his lips down your neck once more, hands expertly smoothing over every inch of skin he can reach.

You slide your hands down his sides, one diving between his legs and palming his stiffening cock, a movement that has Kita nipping slightly more sharply on your neck than he had been, and it’s this slight twinge of pain that makes you mewl in delight. It almost feels like Kita’s blushing cheeks will burn your skin, and you love it. You love making him feel this way, making him so bashful… you liked knowing that you had his heart in a special way that no one else would have, and that no one else could know.

Soon, Kita’s breath is labored and his cock is throbbing. His right hand has slid between your legs as well. Deliciously rough fingers slide over your slick, sensitive folds, causing whines and gasps to fall off your lips before you can even register them.

Then, his thumb grazes over your swollen clit, the tiny nub sending a ripple of pleasure through your body that’s so strong it makes you shutter. It isn’t delicate or dainty; your shoulders heave and shake and you gasp, guttural grunt leaving your lips as you do. Something in Kita changes, then, because he’d never heard that sound from you before. He’d never seen you move like that, react to him in such an instinctive and almost animalistic way. He wanted more of it. He needed to make you do it again.

Another swipe. A similar reaction. Another, a similar. Repeat.

Soon, tears sting the corners of your eyes, your hand around Shinsuke’s cock has stilled, hasn’t moved since the first time he touched your clit like that. Wetness spreads through your folds at an obscene rate, making you feel embarrassed but aroused in equal measure. Kita’s eyes meet yours, the darkness of them taking your breath away before his lips crash into yours.

It’s a breathless few moments with mouths and tongues clashing and lips being sharply nipped with clumsy teeth. Your heart hammers against your chest and you swear you can feel the outline of each rib as it does- you swear you can hear each blood cell as it rushes through your ears, you swear the room is spinning as desire overwhelms you, threatens to pull you under and never let you go, threatens to drown you-

“I love you,” says Shinsuke, his soft but ragged-with-desire voice breaking through your thoughts. You blink. The tip of his nose barely touches yours as he gazes down at you with lidded eyes.

Something about his gaze is so intimate that it makes you feel more exposed than you already are in your naked state. You swear that, in that moment, he really sees you, sees everything you ever thought and everything you are, and everything you hope to be. Everything. All of it. Kita sees it and still loves you and that’s terrifying.

But you know that the secrets he sees will be safe. You know he loves you.

“I love you, too,” you whisper, as if you’re in a sacred temple, “I love you more than anything.”

He smiles again, and you’re breathless. And he’s kissing you again.

And then he’s sliding into your core, going slowly and steadily like he always does. It’s natural for him, it’s second nature at this point. Rushing you or hurting you just so he can get some relief doesn’t interest him. If you’re pleased, then so is he. If you feel good, he does, too.

Your cunt is warm and inviting. Kita is amazed with it, as usual, brow furrowing and bottom lip catching between his teeth as he sheaths himself in the wet heat. You’re suddenly so full of him that you swear you can feel the tip of his cock pressing against the back of your throat. It’s still something you’re getting used to, but you trust Kita, and this does feel good, and before your thoughts can travel any further, he’s swiping his thumb over your clit again.

The pleasure that spasms through you is a different kind. Being so full, being so close, it made you feel everything more strongly, and the whine that left your lips was more high-pitched than any you’d let out previously. Your brows pinch together in pleasure as goosebumps cover your arms.

“You like that, hm?” Kita wonders aloud, voice so rugged with pleasure and so playful that it makes you want to scream and start fucking yourself down on his cock as quickly as possible.

He must be able to read your mind. That’s the only way Kita possibly knows what you’re thinking about, what you’re aching for.

And he starts thrusting slowly, his strong hips moving in a slow, strong, reliable rhythm, one that’s steady but quickly has your eyes rolling shut. Shinsuke’s cock, thick and veiny, drags along your velvet walls, nudging against sweet little nooks that make you whimper in pleasure, pressing against little bundles of nerves that make your toes curl.

You wrap your arms around Kita’s neck, wrapping your legs around his waist, in turn pushing him deeper into your cunt, making you both gasp with pleasure. After a moment to readjust, Kita starts rocking is cock back into you again and finds that steady pace once more. He leans in and presses his lips against yours, leading you into a series of messy, loving kisses that only make your head spin even further. You swear your heart may explode with the love you have for this man and for the way he treats you and how he loves you so perfectly, just the way you need.

You pull away after a moment, pressing your face into his shoulder, once again smelling his soap, but now being confronted with his musky, comforting scent that is solely your husband’s.

It isn’t long before you’re grabbing at him desperately, pressing closer as his hips jerk into you at less controlled speeds, signalling to you easily that Kita is losing his grip on any control he has and is quickly giving in to the delicious and carnal offerings of your core.

Kita groans as you rake your hands through his hair, tugging it and making it stand out at all odd angles, disheveling his normally put-together appearance. His eyes are bleary now, dark as you feel his stomach start to twitch and clench against your own, a sure-fire indication that your husband is going to cum, and soon.

Your cunt clenches around Kita as your own orgasm approaches, and instead of the mind-numbing and goosebump-causing pleasure the swipes to your clit brought at the beginning, each time Kita’s thumb presses against your hard, sensitive, aching little nub, shockwaves of pleasure, almost to the point of pain, shoot through your entire body.

Soon, it’s all too much, and you can’t hold yourself together any longer, not when he’s making love to you so perfectly. You clench almost violently before you feel your orgasm burst forth, gushing around Kita’s cock like the water which escapes a broken dam.

And Shinsuke can’t hold on, not when you’re milking him like that, not when you’ve gushed around him so nicely. He cums, hips pressing forward wildly for a few seconds and then stilling as he moans your name, pressing his forehead into the side of your face.

For several minutes, it’s quiet. From outside, the owl hoots once more in the distance. The breeze rustles the leaves and the insects continue singing their nighttime ballads. Your heart, as well as Kita’s, slows from its breakneck pace, returning to normal, and the glowing, warm pleasure that encompasses your bodies ebbs away at its own pace.

You’re almost afraid to let go, clutching your husband so tightly for comfort, like he’s your lifeline, that letting go seems like a huge step you can’t take. Kita sighs, a smile tugging at his lips, and grabs your hips to pull you more snugly to him.

“I suppose I should have bathed after I came to bed,” he murmurs against your skin, and you huff out a giggle.

Bathing is the furthest thing on your mind- all you can think about is being tethered, held to the earth by your husband’s strong arms. You couldn’t imagine life elsewhere, or with another. Luckily, you’ll never have to- you and Shinsuke will live out your days on the farm, surrounded by your rice, your livestock, and a spouse who loves you so well.

**this work is intended for 18+ audiences only. minors do not interact. do not repost this work.**

[mypersonmyg]

The Misery Chick | MYG

thank you to my favorite @kimtaehyunq for the wonderful banner, ily you talented cutie <3

pairing: Yoongi x reader

genre: fluff, a lil tiny bit of angst, college au

wc: 5.2k (issa short one)

warnings: language

summary: maybe yoongi has a fat crush on you OR he notices, that’s all

a/n: happy birthday to the one and only min yoongi! i am so so fond of him and i couldn’t not write something for him, so I hope you enjoy :D and as always feel free to send in drabble requests for the fic and blah blah blah...

honorary tag: @gukssunshine​

masterlist

To wonder about the quickened stride of the beating appendage in Yoongi’s chest, would be to question the routine catch of gaze to the lone figure at the far end of the classroom, dwarfed by cuddled fabric, consumed with the rapid turn of the lengthy page. His arm rests atop the desk’s surface, supporting the chin that minutely dips with your every flicker of expression, the parting of your lips in gasp mimed by his own. His eyes are glazed under bright light, lids threatening to blink, the passage of time too fast, but oh so slow. 

Yoongi’s knowledge is second hand, rumblings of your demeanor spread through the vine of dialogue that floats coincidentally through his ears to connect with the edges of his brain, chewed and regurgitated without second thought. He holds his refusal to high regard, refusal to believe that you’re nothing more than a student, disgruntled by circumstance. It’s not simple attraction that guides his mind to the eye of logic, the region of reason, though it was the peak of initial interest.

He notices, and that’s all. 

He notices the round of your puffed cheeks that follows a particularly surprising piece of narrative. He notices the seat left empty between you and the wall, open but not a forced invitation, and he notices the way your posture straightens when someone grazes a hair too close. He notices the deflation of your shoulders when you’re left without pair during lessons framed with the inopportunity of interaction forced to simulate the false reality of reality itself. He notices the things others are blind to in their half squint, though the picture is still blurred like the edges of a polaroid. 

The numbness of his wrist, angled by the rest of his chin, draws him from captivation despite motivation to outlast the congregation huddle before you, their fronts focused toward him, his view obscured by obligation of association. His lips form the curvature of amiability necessary for pleasantry, neck craning to the defense of blue jeans offending his locked gaze.

“Can you stop staring so hard? She’s gonna eat you alive,” Hoseok’s finger nudges at the round of Yoongi’s jaw, urging his attention completely away from his person of interest. 

“Fuck off, you don’t even know her.” 

“Neither do you, despite your dedication to staring holes into her side every chance you get. They don’t call her ‘the misery chick’ for nothing, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile.” The jab rubs the wrong direction, Yoongi’s hand landing with a thud to the thick of Hoseok’s skull. “Come on, it’s a joke.”

“Maybe to you, and to everyone else, but she is a person. You guys just don’t look beyond what you wanna see because then she’s more than just a good laugh.” Every utterance of the moniker draws is lips to a downward twitch, fists balling in the pocket of his hoodie or scraping at the fabric of stressed jeans. It’s knowing that if he’s heard it you have ten fold, the thought harboring the wish that he could fold you inward, close to the beat of his chest to shield from the displeasure of words half baked with stupidity and the ignorance of hilarity. 

“Well not everyone wants to see her between the sheets.”

Interruption of the education saves Hoseok from the verbal spar pending within the fire engulfing Yoongi’s pupils. A place of love harbors the words of war, he knows this, knows that Hoseok’s plan is to rile to the point of action, but he’s driven to the brink of insanity by twisted words of encouragement. The kindest person on the planet playing into the stereo of broken records hurled toward the edges of your delicate framing, . 

Yoongi’s hands curl around his pen, ballpoint and already dancing the page, jotting words flown from one canal to the other and back to the atmospheric toxins of brains shorting caffeine. His sleeves are suddenly burning, neck itching with the heat of nerves crawling outward from within the confines of his collar. He glances toward Hoseok staring absently at Yoongi’s decorative scrawl, raising a brow to colliding gazes.

“Is it hot?” Yoongi puckers in mumble, swiping at the skin kissing the fringe sweeping his eyeline. Hoseok’s head careens in the negative, averting gaze to the front of the room, professor droning about the coming assignment, a project that Yoongi barely catches wind of. 

The plague responsible for his discomfort of familiarity is comfort enough to stop the distant tremble of shoulders keen to the stare that meets his eyes from the room’s opposing side. He jolts, or rather the calm of his heart picks back to pace, when his eyes meet irises reflective of his own.  They’re gone as soon as he finds them, but he’s confident that the cool of his neck is confirmation that sanity isn’t all lost. 

“Dude, could you take your notes? I’m gonna need those later,” Hoseok nudges at his forearm, limp from distraction. Yoongi hurries to scribble missed lecture, patient for a lull in speech to make room for declaration. 

“She was looking at me.” 

“What?” 

“Y/n, she was looking at me. I saw her...I felt her.” 

“Maybe she was just staring off into space because this class is a snooze-fest.” Hoseok speaks through the timing of yawn, perfectly punctuating his point. “She probably doesn’t even know you exist. Though, I guess everyone knows you exist, so maybe she just doesn’t care.” 

The words aren’t false, Yoongi’s following his beyond the definition of quaint, his celebrity following him from the rush of the court to the thrill of the keys. He’s hard pressed for a moment of peace, but he often finds it here, lost in you. 

“I’m serious.”

Yoongi sighs an audible defeat, Hoseok’s dropped lids and the rest of his chin atop folded arms a clear sign that his mind is beyond the classroom and beyond Yoongi’s own romantic woes. The end of the lecture appears miles from the start, the wave of dismissal a spell releasing its hold on the shackles chaining the  ghoulish appearance of sleepless students. 

Yoongi has worked himself to the brink of decision by the end of the lecture, sure enough that his stride to your desk will prove a build in the shy tint of his cheeks when he musters a faint ‘hello’. The pan of his half thought out plan doesn’t sort as well as he hoped, the rush of legs scurrying for the door tripping him up in his rush to the chair where you patiently filed notebook to bag. 

His vision is blurred by the passage of sweaters and hoodies, emblems emblazoned on sleeves and beanies sagging from the tips of bedhead. Hoseok follows after his stride in a confused wake from the desk that housed his sleepy head for the last seventy minutes, stumbling along with the drag of feet on tile. 

When destination is met, your chair is neatly housed, your figure nowhere to be found, Yoongi paces back, his sizable sneaker just scuffing the metal recline of an adjacent chair. 

“What are you doing?” Hoseok clutches the muscled fabric of Yoongi’s shoulder, stopping near disaster following the weighted displacement of the two. 

“Nothing, let's get lunch.”

The passage of days are a haze in the midst of the craze of midterms and Yoongi’s attempt to find reason to believe your glance was more than a passing innocence. The press of his back to his mattress, sheets freshly laundered, linens, scented of the artificial makings of fresh lilac courtesy of Jeongguk, are used to his mid-day collapse for a pre-study snooze. He’s swallowed whole beneath the dense of his comforter, fingers curling into the soft material, lips emitting a sigh of satisfaction. 

The buds in his ears are a dull hum, white noise to saturate the crevices of his brain still vibrating from the surge of knowledge consumed at the twice rapid pace of the semester’s schedule. His lids are aflutter, pupils rolling to the dark precipice, the unconscious already tugging at the bits of his subconscious manifested to snooze.  

The muscles of his pillowy cheeks fight upward against the smush to the firm cushioning of his mattress, arms cuddled around the decorative cushion of deep blue. A pitched giggle echoes in the receptors of his brain, bouncing against the walls, a comforting sound. It’s foreign though, the melodic stutter, yet it engulfs his chest with the warmth of affection, his stomach turning with nerves of the giddy sort. 

He teeters on the edge of more, features dancing between streams, a waterfall blur. Yoongi aches for the reach, his physical and metaphorical being extending from the depths of his full size bed, yearning for the exploration of the four walls and beyond. He can swear his fingers graze the soft of skin, the trace of lip curved in sensuality just visible through sleepy haze. The giggles grow in volume, almost as if guided toward his hasty reach. 

“Jeongguk, shut up!” Yoongi falls forward, just catching onto the ledge of his dresser, quick reflexes doing wonders for his physical well being, but the skip in his mental and the stop of his heart are undeniable. 

He's heard the voice a handful of times, an arm eagerly shooting to respond to a professor’s quarry, the hidden mumblings that he swears he’s the only one to pick up on, his smirk almost never enough to stop impending chuckle.

It’s you. 

He knows, but can’t quite grasp that just beyond the barrier of belief, past the door sealed to keep from disturbance you’re somewhere laughing with Jeongguk. He listens for a moment, unmoving, to attempt a deciphering of your intentions, but laughter has turned to the inaudible mumblings from the room across the hall.  He’s silent in his trek to the door, pulling it on rusted hinges, cringing with every scrape of copper and wood. 

He slips down the hall on tiptoe, unsure if you’re attune to the other members of the house, but not ready to face you if Jeongguk’s door swings back to reveal the occupants of the small cubical. Yoongi makes way to the kitchen, surprised to find the rest of his roommates crowded into the sizable space, each occupied with their own endeavor of strewn textbooks and half frozen toaster strudel. 

“Well well look who’s awake,” Jimin sneers playfully in Yoongi’s direction, drawing attention from the rest of the room. 

“Bet I can guess why,” Taehyung snickers, glances exchanged with a conspiratorial air, the shift of Yoongi’s feet not unnoticed by his personal tormentors. “We told Jeongguk he might wanna keep it down, we know how you like your rest.” 

“Jeongguk didn’t wake me,” Not the correct turn of phrase, realized just moments late, the flicker of pupils raising with the feigned ah ha! Yoongi side steps them all, settling on the sphere of orange grabbing his interest from the bowl on the table, plopping into the nearest chair. 

“Oh he didn’t? Well what other reason could you possibly have to forgo your pre-study nap, hmmm?” Jin pokes at the slightly greened peel of Yoongi’s fruit, hand smacked away with haste. He withdraws to card through his hair, lengthening by the day, framing his face with more beauty than should be allowed by the ethereal senior. 

“I was hungry, s’all.” He tosses scraps with each peel of fruitful flesh, eagerly sliding bits of tangerine past his puckered lips. Anything to keep his mind from the fresh dose of giggles eating at his brain like a love bitten parasite. “Who—umm, who does Jeongguk have over.” 

“Oh, Kookie has a friend over? We had no idea,” Namjoon hums, glasses perched to the bridge of his nose, arms eaten by the sleeves of his hoodie. 

“Maybe you recognize their voice? I mean, you’re the only one close enough to hear it.” Hoseok’s grin is shit eating, half hidden behind the length of his hand, fingers curling in position at the tip of his chin. 

“Oh, oh! I think I recall him saying something about a...Y/—hmmm was it…” Taehyung fakes stumbles over the name, tips of his fingers tracing the glass of his crumbed plate. 

“Y/n.” Yoongi speaks through teeth clenched, his cheeks rosy from snatched sleep and the scrutiny he’s placed himself under, the heat of a lamp concentrated in the five pairs of eyes trained on his every movement for their amusement. 

“So you do know her, why don’t you go say hi?” Jin pats him with vigour, the sound of an echoed frame permeating the air of what Yoongi has affectionately titled, friendly toxicity. Those same muffled voices grow with the trek down the stairs, threatening to give way with each step. Yoongi lifts his eyes from his half eaten fruit for the first time since he sat down, daring them to say a word out of turn with a single look. 

“It’s pretty quiet considering seven guys live here,” Your voice is audible from the front door, Yoongi’s grip tightening, juice spilling down the crevices of his hand, soiling his shirt sleeve, palms already sticky from the stress. “I have one roommate and, as you’ve seen, she can be loud enough for the both of us.” 

“I’m just as surprised as you are actually. I know Yoongi is probably asleep,” Yoongi sinks into his chair, knowing glances threatening to drop him straight through the wooden surface. “The rest are probably out.” 

“Yoongi?” Your voice strays a bit, Yoongi’s lip twitching, unsure what to think of the sudden strain in pitch. 

“Yeah, do you know him?” 

“Oh, um...kinda? Not really, we share a class together, but we’ve never talked. I’m pretty sure he’d think he’s too cool for me anyways. You know, ‘misery chick’ and all.” Yoongi levels a stare at Hoseok whose arms lift in readied defense, though his own face conjures frown at your words. Your attention clearly never spotting the longing with which he’s leveled you for the past few months. 

“You’re not the ‘misery chick’,” Jeongguk’s voice holds firm reassurance, something Yoongi wishes he could give you, but he’s glued, too curious for the thought of impromptu interruption. “People are just jerks. Besides, Yoongi-hyung isn’t like that at all. He likes to pretend he doesn’t know how cool people think he is.” 

“Guess I’ll just have to take your word for it. I have to go, but I’ll see you tomorrow, Koo.” 

The door closes, Jeongguk just as soon rounding into the kitchen, tracks dead when there are six pairs of eyes trained on his figure. “Wha—have you all been here the whole time?” 

He only takes pause momentarily, his stride leading to the fridge, a juice box of all things pulled from metal confines. The naked eye would never guess the soft interior of Jeongguk, his features contrasting with the boots swallowing his feet and the tattoos eating his arm, tracing his digits. But he’s the walking embodiment of the careful youth painting each man posted in the room, a piece of him nursed by a piece of them with each day passing. 

“Yeah, we’re just hangin’ around, Jeonggukie.” Hoseok shrugs, ruffling the base of Jeongguk’s wild curls. 

“Well you’re doing it pretty quietly, Y/n thought it was weird.” 

“Are you guys dating?” Jimin’s question is thrown with abandon, eyes trained on Jeongguk with absolute focus, Yoongi sending a glare toward the silver haired fiend. 

“No.” Jeongguk pays little mind to the question, too busy squeezing every last drop from the box clutched in his fist, doe eyes glistening with concentration. “We met last semester in lit and she’s really cool so we started hanging out. You guys should meet her sometime, she doesn’t have a lot of friends because of this dumb rumor that she’s ‘the misery chick’ which is ridiculous because she’s one of the nicest people I’ve met here.” 

“Yeah, you can bring her over any time.” Namjoon encourages, book lowered to the table, face scrunching in mental agony when he realizes the corner of his novel is soaked with the spill of orange juice. 

“She said she knows you from class Yoongi, but she doesn’t think you’d like her. I think you would though! Maybe you should try to talk to her next class.” 

“Yeah,” Yoongi readily agrees, new found vigor in his speech. “Maybe…” 

Over the next several weeks, Yoongi is sure that coincidence isn’t what found his stare locked to yours, Jeongguk’s overheard conversation clearly leaving your interest peaked about Yoongi who was forced to make his own gazes less frequent for fear of being caught. His first sighting after he floated the walls of his home like a ghost in haunt was next lecture. 

The nerves that ate at his skin the first instance of your curious scan was turned bearable by the itching of excitement to his every nerve, skin alight with the tango of possibility traversing his very being. His attention was wayward, standing at the head of the class, scooping the pages required for lecture from the overflowing desk, a minute ‘excuse me’ cutting through the thick of his cogged brain. 

“Yes?” Was his response, regurgitated dumbly despite the forming line waiting for him to budge to his waiting seat. 

“Uh...could I get by...papers.” He smiles, unintentional, but the effect is the duck of your head, refusal to meet his eyes under such a heated gaze. He’s left to stare a moment longer before the snag of his sleeve, Hoseok forcing him away, calming the mob of students too impatient to momentarily still for the fruition of his romantic interest. 

Lately, your exit from class seems somehow quicker than usual, the practiced haste too much for him to master, another obstacle to his formal introduction. Though it seems your professor can read the tension that hovers the expanse of the classroom, a thread itching to be linked by two lovers, one unknowing of the delicate pull she has on her soul suitor. 

“Okay!” The professor stands at the front of the room, barely holding the attention of the class, barely holding Yoongi’s attention until he speaks once more. “Instead of a formal midterm, I want you all to complete a joint essay, yes you heard me correctly! I want you to pair up and write an essay on the topic of your choosing—as long as that topic is related to the course.” 

Yoongi perks up, ignoring the telltale that Hoseok hopes to grab him as soon as the class is dismissed because Yoongi has a plan of his own. 

“Of course I won’t force you to choose a partner, I know some of you prefer to work alone. But no more than two people to a group. Now I can see that you’re all on the edge of your seats, but I’m feeling generous today, so you’re dismissed, but your pages are due on my desk beginning of class Monday!” The final words of the professor send the class into frenzy, those who were paying attention quick to grab hold of their half and those who weren’t suddenly catching up and scrambling for someone who’ll make do.

“Hey, we’re partners, right?” Hoseok looks at Yoongi hopeful, but Yoongi already has his sights set on you, watching everyone link up, resigned to working solo. 

“Nah, I’ve got another partner in mind if that’s okay with you.” Hoseok catches the drift rather quickly, wide smile forgoing slight disappointment at his loss of the sure A on his midterm. 

“Go for it,” Hoseok gives a light shove forward, much appreciated by Yoongi whose heart threatens to burst from his chest, sure that the nerves are painted on his face like a slice of Van Gogh. He’s just in time, your hands shoved into your pockets, ready to leave the suffocation of a space smothered in unwelcome. 

“Hey.” Yoongi can see the uncertainty, your eyes glancing to either side to ensure that he is certainly addressing you. 

“Hey…” 

“So, this midterm thing is kinda weird, right?” He can already see the snicker on Hoseok’s face, though his friend is posted at the door opposite him. Your own lips quirk, his only thought of coherency aimed at how cute the action is. You rock on your heels, he notes your style isn’t far off from the bones of Jeongguk, hoodie black and heavy boots ready to stomp through endless waves of the nauseating sea of university. 

“Yeah...I guess it’s a little unconventional. But great for people who get test anxiety,” You humor him, hands withdrawing from jeaned confines to gesture wildly to the room void of anyone but the three remaining vessels, two of which are engaged in unlikely exchange. “Did you need something?” 

“Huh?” 

“Sorry! I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a class to get to and I have a thing about being late. I figure there’s a reason you’re talking to me seeing as we’ve never actually talked before…” You catch yourself in ramble, tripping over phrases whilst Yoongi watches without missing a beat. 

He’s incredibly taken with the way the words flow without pretense, a nice change to the closed off demeanor people falsely associate with you. He would listen for a lifetime to the things you have to say, hopefully with the clasp of finger and longing glances. Your intent is nonsense, nerves eating away at the buds of your tongue. To him it’s a poetry specially curated, a tickle to his throat bringing forth the soft laughter that halts your speech. 

“I’m sorry, you go ahead I’m just...nervous.” 

“No no, don’t apologize, I like listening to you,” He coos when you smile, quick to recover before your eyes, wide and attentive find his own once more, now notably softer, safer. “I love your smile too…” 

“You’re not so bad yourself…” Soft spoken and not altogether sure is the way you speak, your class long forgotten, a blip in rear view shadowed by the shining beacon before you. “So…?”

“Right, right...I was just wondering if you’d maybe wanna work together?” Despite compliments and hinted flirtation you’re taken aback by the offer, your eyes skirting Yoongi completely, raising question to the figure station by the exit. Hoseok offers you a smile you can’t help but return his thumbs raising in the affirmative. 

“He’s all yours,” Hoseok assures, taking his leave prematurely, Yoongi still waiting for confirmation. 

“No pressure, just thought I’d ask. I think we’d work well together,” And I wanna know you, he withholds for fear of frightening you more so than the sudden acknowledgement already has.

“Well I don’t know about that, but yeah I’d love to if you’re sure.” 

“I’m positive. Wanna meet at my place after school?” 

“Sounds good.” You pull your phone swiping at the screen before passing it over. “Just text me when you’re free.” 

“I’ll text the address,” He knows it’s unnecessary, just taking precautions to shield from the admission of his eavesdrop the last time you occupied the residence. You wait until you’re once again clutching the spherical confines of your devices, checking and double checking that all digits are present, not unfamiliar with the harsh reality of falsehood buried beneath genuine interest.

“Oh, I actually know where you live. My friend Jeongguk is one of your roommates, so I know my way.” 

“Well I’m sorry we’ve missed each other, that it took me so long to say hello.” Yoongi’s legs lead him half a step closer, an accidentally purposeful close of the gap between, your eyes avoid the bottom half of his face, focusing instead on the bill of his cap and the dark hair tickling the edges. 

“Guess you’ll just have to make up for it somehow.” 

“Guess I will.” 

Your visits to Yoongi are routine over the next week, the laughter filling the hectic halls caused by him rather than his roommates. He’s seen more of you in a week than he could’ve hoped in a lifetime, even more confused about the way you’ve been outcast by a majority of your major. He’s awed by your lack of reaction to the judgement of peers, often citing it as a joke, sarcasm lacing the words. 

It’s the day before assignment is due, you’re perched at Yoongi’s desk, he’s laying on his bed, tossing his basketball in mock free throw simultaneously with his toss of ideas while your fingers type vigorously in final draft. 

This particular evening leaves you alone with Yoongi, the other members of the house trying and failing to convince you to join for their weekly outing to the nearest bar where they would no doubt drink their weight to poorly prepare for the week to come. Yoongi was swift to opt out, much preferring your company to the stench of stale beer and jokes poorly executed by Jin after he downs his fifth shot. 

You were insistent that he let you handle the rest of the paper, just pages standing between you and your final product, but he’s too fond of the way your post-its decorate the shelf over his desk, different colored notes for every paragraph, the ink of your pens highlighting each point in magenta saturation. He’s obsessed with the way you hunch to close to the pages of your textbook while scolding him for getting too close to the screen of his laptop in the next breath. 

He can’t help the thought of what could be, close calls and a hair’s breadth stepping between you all week. It’s the price of seven roommates and a lock loosened with the jiggle of a handle. The hesitancy that still fills your pupils despite the easy way his words lace with genuine interest. 

Yoongi remembered what it was like to notice, deciding that it’s much better to experience you. The moment is delicate, your soft suggestions and argumentative replies tossed with a hint of tease lacing the bite of your tone. He doesn’t try to hide the smile that breaks the mold of his face, lips dampened by the press of gums prominent from healthy reach. 

“Can I ask you a question?” He raises, your fingers slowing against the keyboard, chair swiveling to offer full attention. “Does it bother you...the whole ‘misery chick’ thing?” 

He’s not sure what possesses it, but he is sure that knowing will make things easier, break a barrier that to him doesn’t exist. He knows your breath is baited, knows you’ve been waiting for the pull of the rug, so he offers a tug, a comforting teasing sort of thing to ease your mind and close the gap of misunderstanding that he could never blame you for. 

“Can I ask you a question? Do you believe the whole ‘misery chick’ thing?” You counter, scooting along hardwood until your knees are pressed to his mattress, sinking into the cushioned flesh as far as it allows. Your stare is careful, not expectant of the negative or offended by the positive. “It’s okay if you do, just don’t lie about it.” 

There's a sadness in your delivery and Yoongi notes it immediately. Your attempt to hide the twitch of your lip and the anxious fold of your hands in your lap don’t escape him. Your tone is even, your eyes much the same and he wonders how anyone could ever believe it, he’s grateful that he never did. 

“Not for a second.” He responds almost immediately, waiting for any lingering doubt on your end. It never comes.

“Good.” Is your reply, just as even as the question itself. Your shoulders relax, posture not as stiff as before. “It does bother me, not as much as it used to, but it does. It bothers me that they don’t like that I’m not like them. I don’t mean that in the whole ‘I’m not like other girls’ way, but I’m just not Cathy college, you know? I don’t get excited about parties and drinking, I don’t need to go out all the time to have fun, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you if you do, but I don’t and because I’m not like everyone else I have to be ‘the misery chick’.

He’s sure you don’t realize it, but Yoongi see’s the build of tears in your eyes, unshed but there and it breaks him. Breaks him that something so trivial could be the defining factor of someone’s experience, that you can hide it so well at the cost of your own happiness.

“I mean, it’s college, you’d think that people have better things to do than come up with reasons to ridicule someone, but I guess I have too much faith.” You finish, glancing up to find Yoongi all ears, lips etched in frown. “Sorry, you didn’t ask for all of that.” 

“People suck.” Is all he says, hand extending toward you, inviting you to join him on his island, silent but sure. You crawl the length of the mattress, your back pressing the headboard, fingers laced with his own, warm and sweaty from nerves, yours or his neither of you are sure. 

“People do suck.” 

“I know what’ll make you feel better.” He offers, thumb running along the jagged edges of your knuckle, skin kissing skin. You lift your head, half leaning on his shoulder so your eyes meet, a reflection of picture perfect, a record in perfect sync. 

“Yeah?” 

“You should go out with me.” Yoongi doesn’t expect a snort, but the response is exactly what he receives your head averting to conceal your laughter, hands shielding your face from the expanse of an ego deflated by the graze of your accidental needle. “Why are you laughing?” 

“No I’m not—I just—you’ve been looking at me like I’m completely insane all semester! I didn’t think you liked me, I thought you were looking right through me...I kinda thought you were just coming to class high every day.” 

“I don’t even smoke, those were not the eyes of a stoner, they were the eyes of a man who’s very fond of you.” Yoongi defends his position, his usually dormant stare now bugged to exaggeration, unavailable for serious consideration. 

“My mistake, though I don’t know whether to be weirded out or completely flattered.” 

“You better be so flattered that I can see hearts in your eyes because you were pretty quick to agree to be my partner for this project!” Yoongi keeps the charade, glad to lighten the tension and draw from the heaviness of the previous conversation. It’s not a chapter that’s closed, but the beginning is the build and he’s planning an entire novel with you, so he figures his time isn’t limited by the tick of a clock nearing the midnight hour. 

“I heard I’ve got a sure ‘A’  and I’d be an idiot to pass that up.” 

“You could get a passing grade in your sleep, you can’t fool me. But you can go on a date with me.”

“So you, cool guy Min Yoongi, want to go on a date with me, ‘the misery chick’?” You gasp, hand clutched to your chest, Yoongi’s hand catching hold and bringing it to his own, to the beat of his heart, the bass begging for a melody that only you can satisfy. 

“More than anything.” 

“Well when you put it that way I have no choice but to say yes, but to be clear, I’ve definitely seen you looking at Hoseok with that same look in your eyes so you might wanna sort some stuff out first—”

[embrassemoi]

Gleamin' Shiny and Bright ✿ L.E

Loving Lily made it feel as if the world suddenly became saturated with varying piercing bright colours that were hidden before. It was endless and expanded with every waking moment. She learned to love Lily in hues and shades of colours: reds also revealed to have pinks, blues suddenly had turquoise and periwinkle, purples became violets and lavender while yellow became creams and blended with red to make orange.

Pairing: Lily Evans x [F]Reader CW: Implied sexual content, fluff, a lot of fluff, discussions of marriage, fluff, Unbeta’d A/N: Inspo: Emerald Eyes by Fleetwood mac

【 Masterlist | Playlist | ao3 】

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Lily’s fingers softly trailed down the contours of Y/N’s spine as her lips trailed her jaw all the way up to her ear. Both laid bare, bodies intertwined in soft silk sheets, basking in the soft golden glow of the setting sun. Lily whispered seductively into her ear which had her skin burning in its wake.

“You’re insatiable!” she giggled, pushing Lily away playfully before turning to face her.

“Only for you.” Lily purred, before attacking her with peppered kisses. Y/N’s hands sneaked to cradle her face, weaving their way through her red, messy hair cascading all around her.

The way the warm rays spilled onto Lily made her look ethereal. A soft blush spread all over her cheekbones as Y/N subconsciously traced her freckles. They were laid out like a constellation, a road hidden with secrets and stories that only she knew.

She would consider herself lucky; to be able to touch, to know, to laugh and to hold someone like Lily Evans. Y/N could live a thousand lifetimes and still never feel worthy of someone like her.

She recalled the early stages of falling in love with Lily. It crept on her slowly, quietly but then pulled her into a whirlwind. Falling in love with her felt like climbing onto a roller coaster, being strapped in tightly and started moving. Every sharp twist, every slump and new loop constantly had her wanting more. The ride would speed up, her heart pound and fluttered before her stomach turned and twisted once the ride flipped upside down. But she was more than fine with that. Perfect, actually. It stayed like that, for weeks, for months until the ride came to a stop.

Being in love with Lily was like climbing off the ride, dazed and high, enriched in the atmosphere around. Everything felt soothing, like slipping into a warm bath on a winter’s eve. Even her name brought her to ease.

Every kiss pressed to her lips made Y/N feel sun-kissed, basked in a thousand stars. “I love you,” she breathed.

There was a soft gaze in Lily’s eyes as her forehead leaned against hers; eyes darting across her face like she was trying to commit everything to memory. Before Y/N went to open her mouth again, she was suddenly interrupted. Her words were quiet, breathy — barely above a whisper but it seemed like the loudest Lily had ever spoken.

“Do you want to get married?”

Y/N halts, becoming motionless and pulls away from Lily to stare unto her bright, emerald eyes as silence ensues. Her jaw is slacked, confused as she studies a-way-too calm Lily whilst her abdomen explodes with fluttering butterflies. They could both hear the soft crashing of waves in the background along with the seagulls singing their daily rituals. They both had rented out a small cottage in Cornwall for their second anniversary, their window wide open as the curtains moved as the breeze flowed in.

She swore her heart stopped.

“. . .What? Was that — are you proposing?”

But then the reality of what she said must’ve hit Lily all at once as the words fell from her lips because she sits upright, eyes wide and tries to seem unperturbed by Y/N’s shock. She rips away, hand threading through her hair as her mouth opens and closes like somehow the action would take back what she said.

“Ugh — Y’know. . . um — right, sorry. I — let’s er. . . forget what I said.”

Lily pushes up, away from her, the cool feeling of the evening breeze now surrounds them but Y/N grabs her wrist and pulls her back.

“No, continue!” she urged. Somehow, Lily’s blush deepens.

“Well — erm, no, I wasn’t proposing,” but then Lily sputters, quickly adding on. “It’s not like I don’t want to! I very much want to — it just won’t be like this? Wait, um — okay.” She stops to recollect herself. “We’ve just never talked about. . .” her eyes glance up to gauge her reaction, “marriage before. . . and once I propose, I just wanted to make sure you were on the same page?”

Y/N’s lungs seem to collapse, rip apart and then piece themselves back together as the implication from Lily’s words reverberated inside her now very empty head.

I want to, she said — once I propose. She said once and want to. That means it will happen — that she has every intention of marrying her eventually.

Lily Evans wants to marry her. She has to take a moment to process it, but the silence leaves Lily panicking.

“Nevermind, it’s stupid — not important —”

“Stop it,” she finally snaps out of her daze, “that wasn’t stupid. Far from it.”

Lily drops her head into her hands as she struggles to put her thoughts into words. Her palms eventually worm their way to press firmly against her eyes as her fingers yank down on her hair. She was struggling, immensely hard and Y/N’s heart ached at the scene. So, she moved closer to her, closing the gap between them as she placed an encouraging hand on Lily’s knee. That seemed to stop the intrusive thoughts altogether as she bit her lip.

She takes a deep breath of air, feeling the breeze help calm her down and chest starts to return to its normal intervals.

“I know I want to get married,” she states. Her eyes lock with Y/N’s as she desperately tries to make out how she’s feeling. Lily read every micro-expression, studied the way she blinked or breathed in hopes of an answer.

Y/N lets the words sink in for a second and her heart beats so hard against her chest she wonders if Lily could hear. But then Lily coughs; she wants a response — some sort — any sort of confirmation that what she said was okay. “So. . .”

“Wow.” Inwardly, she scolds herself.

Lily tilts her head. “Is that a bad wow?”

She gently lays herself back down on the soft pillows as Lily follows. They both face each other as the wind beckons them. She tucks a strand of fallen red hair behind Lily’s ears and Y/N couldn’t help but fall in love just a little more, a little harder and a few imagines of what their potential wedding could look like popped up.

“No," she reassured her, "but you really know how to leave me breathless, literally.” And then Lily let out a breathy chuckle and she smiled. Her smile… it lit Y/N up like a thousand stars. Her smile was so bright, so beautiful that it could make flowers grow and it was the most precious treasure Y/N could ever ask for. Her heart cooled, from the cool wind, to a warm contentedness.

She pulls Lily flush against her, pressing a soft kiss against her velvety lips and pulls back just enough to see her reaction but bathe in her warmth.

“I do too,” her breath fanned gently across Lily’s face.

She couldn’t contain her smile as her eyes crinkle. “You do?”

Her smile was wide and Lily’s eyes gleamed so brightly that they could rival emeralds themselves. Y/N knew for a long time too. Everything about their relationship made her feel safe, surrounded by a serenity that only Lily could provide. She made her feel hugged like freshly fallen snow on a mountain; eyes so profound that searched through the very inner workings of her soul. She felt new and exciting, yet like she’d known her forever. Lily was dazzling, beaming with glittering colours. She’d known for a while, it’s just the realization came a little later than her lover’s.

“I want to get married too.”

Lily tackled her into a hug which had them both chuckling out. Both in amusement, but filled with the purest love that made their hearts ache with pride.

And so they started brainstorming.

“Is there a time you would want to?”

“Anytime. We’re young, in love — the world is our oyster, blah, blah,” Y/N replies, but her answer is honest. Anytime. “Getting the timing down will be hard.”

“Imagine proposing and James see? I think he’ll wail and faint.”

“Or Sirius would make it about himself.”

“He would whine about not proposing to Remus first.”

“What about a public or private proposal?”

“Private.”

“I was thinking the exact same thing.”

“What about flowers?”

“Oh, pfft,” Y/N lets out a snort, “there obviously has to be —” “Don’t you dare say what I think you’re about to say.”

Y/N mocks offensive, dramatically rolling her eyes. “Let me finish!”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Terribly sorry.”

Her lips twitch into a knowing smirk, “— lilies. There have to be lilies. Maybe they’ll be my bouquet.”

“Of course, of course.”

“Preferably. . . would red clash with our scheme?”

“Red, as in my hair?”

“Yes.” “Then probably.”

They burst out into another fit of giggles. Maybe it was paradoxically — a placebo — cliche — but Y/N felt her heartbeat calm at the thought. Maybe it was finally getting an answer, that they’re taking their relationship to the next level. Marriage. . . forever. . . It's said to be scary, but maybe it’s because it’s with Lily that it seems the exact opposite.

Loving Lily made it feel as if the world suddenly became saturated with varying piercing bright colours that were hidden before. It was endless and expanded with every waking moment. She learned to love Lily in hues and shades of colours: reds also revealed to have pinks, blues suddenly had turquoise and periwinkle, purples became violets and lavender while yellow became creams and blended with red to make orange.

Unknowingly, for their fourth anniversary two years from then, they both bought a set of rings with one question heavy in their hearts, knowing deep down what their response would be.

Yes.

And then, I do.

[ilovedig]

OH GOD THAT STORY IS INSANE LOOK AT THIS: “John lit up a joint before the tiny prop plane even left the ground. After the second pass, I started to feel really, really paranoid. It was such a little plane, and there was a flimsy little curtain separating the four of us from the pilot. I imagined the smoke permeating that curtain, drifting around the top and the bottom and the sides. Was the pilot getting high, too?

I couldn’t stop my thoughts from spiraling into panic. How could the pilot not be high? He was sitting in the same tiny plane with us, we were all breathing the same air that was saturated with hashish. High-quality hashish. If my eyes were burning, surely his were, too. If I couldn’t think straight, how could he? If I could barely wrap my mouth around a few simple words, how was he flying the fucking plane?

I imagined the pilot, stoned out on hash, deciding to have a little fun with us. In my altered state, I visualized a scene in which he turned the nose of the plane to fly straight up into the sky. I swear I felt the plane tilting, rising, lifting. Just as I was fantasizing about how that scene might end, the plane hit some turbulence and started rocking up and down and from side to side. The four of us got big eyed. My hands were sweating, and I was taking shallow little breaths. The plane was bucking by that time and there were all these weird noises, like metal parts tearing and engines coming loose. John and Yoko started chanting “Hare Krishna,” and then I knew we were in big trouble because I could tell by looking at their faces that they also thought we were going to crash and burn. I started chanting with them, Bill chimed in, and we were all chanting “Hare Krishna” for what seemed like hours but must have been only five or maybe ten minutes.

When we started chanting, I felt better. I reached a moment of acceptance. If we die, I thought, at least it will be on the front pages of all the newspapers in the world. I imagined the headlines, “John and Yoko Dead in Fiery Crash” and in smaller letters “Apple Employees Chris O’Dell and Bill Oakes Among the Dead” and in even smaller letters “Pilot Thought to Be Under the Influence of Hashish.” Somehow imagining that newspaper headline (Derek would do a fabulous job with the press release) made me feel better, because if I died that day at least I wouldn’t leave this world as an unknown.

We kept chanting after the plane landed, and we didn’t stop until we took a few deep breaths of the sweet night air and knew for sure that our feet were firmly planted on good old solid ground.” NIGHTMARE

Well, if you know my blog at all you know my brain instantly screamed "Lenninson" upon reading "Hare Krishna."

That aside, holy shit that sounds absolutely horrifying. I've been on small connecting flight planes before, which I assume are similar and that was scary as shit.

You'd think the Beatles would be put on the best planes, I guess not.

[aquaticstyles]

unchained

A while ago I was asked for a “Have You Ever Been In Love” sequel, and while this is probably not the direction you guys were expecting, this is what I came up with. Also, this one’s (loosely) inspired by the song “Scott Street” by the lovely Phoebe Bridgers (highly recommend listening to the spotify sessions version while listening). Fun fact, for forever I misheard the lyrics, thinking she was saying “unchained” instead of “ashamed.” After noticing that I have, in fact, been wrong this entire time, I realized I kinda liked my version better (sorry Phoebe). And, me being me, I ran with it and it spun into this quick, 1.4k part two. Reblogs + feedback help so much! Enjoy!! xx, Jane 

“Have you ever been in love?”

Harry’s heart stops.

The question catches him off guard, and not just because he’s not used to interviewers asking such personal ones (he guesses this is what he signed up for when he agreed to be the first male flying solo on the cover of Vogue). It makes his heart stop because of his answer, because of the woman that had once asked him the same exact question.

Harry has never been one to linger in his sadness; he finds it unproductive, and quite honestly, completely depressing. After a break up, one can find the caramel-colored curls belonging to the world’s latest phenomenon sweating out his sorrow, or frustration, at the gym, pounding the boxing bag again and again and again. “Nothing another set can’t fix,” his trainer, Mike, would often tease the man in denial, knowing good and well by his posture upon entering the ring, slumped shoulders and an ever-present crease between his eyebrows, that another one had bit the dust the night prior. Mike had learned fairly quickly to never ask questions, to simply let Harry work out his emotions as he pleases, even if that means letting him walk out with wrapped fists masking throbbing, crimson knuckles.

Harry has never been one to talk about his sadness either; he finds it prolongs the pain rather than diminishing it, an annoying gnat swarming around an abnormally large bite from a crisp apple, halting his progression in enjoying his afternoon snack because he just can’t catch the bloody thing. His sister has tried to break him from his stubborn ways, even resulting to getting the lanky man drunk off tequila in hopes of him finally opening up about his incessant missed targets; however, that only ever ends up with Gemma’s arms holding up the giggling teddy bear and folding his bulky body into a taxi, mimicking cramming a cotton ball into a straw. Therapy was suggested and waved off with an inked palm, because if he doesn’t want to talk to his sister about it, how on earth is he supposed to talk to a stranger?

Never-ending claims of “I’m fine,” and “It just didn’t work out,” and “Don’t worry ‘bout me,” and “It wasn’t even that serious.” Sure, each breakup took a little something out of the man that insisted he was “fine,��� but eventually, a couple dozen inked journal pages later, Harry would be back to his normal, happy-go-lucky, perfectly-kind self.

All of these rang true for most of Harry’s young adulthood.

All of these were common occurrences, that is, until Harry met you.

You were unlike anyone he had ever met. Selfless, but not in an over-bearing, walk-all-over-me kind of way. Funny, but not in an underlying-hatred, fake-laugh kind of way. Genuine, but not in a look-at-me, fake kind of way. Honest, in a I-want-to-know-everything-that-makes-you-you, ask-you-questions-until-the-sun-rises kind of way. Drop-dead-gorgeous in the most unbelievable, glowing, ethereal, kind of way that he constantly reminded you of. You were the perfect balance, the missing diamond to even out the coal on the other end of the scale.

Loving you felt like the ocean.

In the morning when there’s a hazy screen covering your lenses, clouding the soft sunlight in a muted, white-washed filter. It’s more gray, yet still golden as the shining mass of fire lazily rises from its slumber. It’s calm, clouds stretched apart like cobwebs in the faded blue sky above, waves leisurely, almost too relaxed, crashing along the bleached shore then disappearing back into the horizon. Still sleepy, still new, an entire day ahead of you.

In the afternoon when the sun is at its highest and hottest, radiating down ultraviolet rays that burn your skin, causing alarmingly red shoulders in need of aloe that soon progressively heal and turn into a bronzed exterior. Speckles of light dancing upon excited waves, similar to a neighborhood of children dressed in pink polka dots and orange overalls running towards the ice cream truck filled to the brim with dreams of sugary stomachaches. It’s saturated, every color its brightest and loudest, pops of cerulean and coral. It’s a blanket of comfort, a suffocating scarf. It’s sweet. It’s sour. A cool glass of lemonade sinking into a bed of quicksand. Annoying and astonishing.

In the night, when the yellowing presence is long gone in the awakening of the moon, the deepest indigo swirling in between pockets of stars dotted and flecked into the atmosphere like freckles. It’s black and blue. You don’t know where the earth stopss and the water begins, familiarity lost as the waves erase each new footprint in the sand. The tide is an abuser, sweet as it sings you in, terrifying as it pulls you under. Skinny dipping, vulnerable, exciting, adrenaline, heart thumping, diving, sinking, drowning.

The morning, the afternoon, the night. The happening, the honeymoon, the heartbreak.

Ever since it ended, everything Harry had ever known was cast aside, thrown out like a Gucci jumper from last season. For the first time in his twenty-six years of living, fourteen of those juggling the obstacles that relationships can and will bring, Harry was irreversibly numb, a pair of frozen, gloveless fingertips blue from the icy wind. Not only did he linger in the gut-wrenching grief, he was absorbed by it. Instead of waking up each morning tucked into the bare side of your body diffusing innocent warmth, sipping a steaming cup of black coffee received by hands much smaller than his own, he woke up with a stranger laying on his chest, cold, with a pounding headache the bottle of whiskey had gladly supplied from the night before. The days felt as if they lasted an eternity, time stuck in slow-motion, tick, tick, ticking, one second, one and a half, one and three quarters, two. He watched the seasons pass, the grass dying and regenerating into its natural emerald shade from his bedroom, dust pocketing in the corners of a picture frame containing two pairs of sparkling eyes and genuine, toothy grins sitting on the windowsill. Nights consisted of him lying sleepless on his back, eyes wide awake, thumbs twiddling as the echoes of helicopters overhead drone in and out. Dozens of missed calls remained unanswered: Mum, Gem, Mitch, Mike, Adam, Sarah, Mum, Mum, Gem, Mum, Mike, Mitch, Gem, Mitch, Mum…

He was stuck, a pancake glued to an ungreased pan, charred. It was when this melancholy had prolonged for nearly its sixth month, and all at home remedies (which included drinking, writing, drinking because he was writing, and writing because he was drinking) failed to provide any peace that he decided to give in to the recommendations from almost every single one of his friends: therapy. After the first session, he was ready to book it and sprint off to a deserted island with nothing but a coconut filled with rum to accompany his solitude. Turns out that one session was the mento to his coca cola of bottled-up emotions, exploding months’ worth of buried feelings and memories in an hour. It took the will of God (and Gemma purposefully lying and telling him they were going to get lunch) to get Harry back in the baby-pink-painted interior of his therapist’s office. After months of talking, sorting, compartmentalizing, yelling, crying, healing, unpacking, and reflecting, Harry tackled down the closure he had been chasing. A year and an album later, when he heard your name, he no longer felt trapped, heart beating rapidly, trying desperately to break apart his ribcage, he felt unchained—a prisoner uncaged, pounds and pounds of metal unlocked from his wrists, free.

Before, your name was paired with a colorless photo album, snapshots of vibrancy draining into black and white, frozen, lifeless, still.

Now, your name resembled a film reel of the best moments, your sweater hanging in his closet, your arm thrown around his mother’s shoulder in a polaroid candid, your laugh echoing in the acoustics of his shower after you nearly slipped on the lavender bubbles coating sudsy toes, your hands massaging his scalp, twisting curls into detailed plaits, your foamy lips smushing against a stubbled cheek, leaving remnants of peppermint mocha in the winter air, your satin skirt contrasting from his purple flares in his backyard, playing thumb war and whispering confessions in the moonlight. The good memories built a brick wall to block out the bad, dimming the light of your downfall.

“Have you ever been in love?” The question echoes again in Harry’s ears, causing a grin and a dimple to pop into his cheek. The fuzzies. Once, twice, three times. Click, shake, tape.

“Yeah, I have.”

[passivenovember]

And Everyday was Overcast.

Part One : Hammers and Nails

Billy needed someplace to go when the grave was desecrated.

When his eyes unglued themselves, peeling off eyelashes in their wake, when the earth was overturned, torn and left hanging like shreds of old fabric; Steve had been there. By some miracle he had been consumed like he always was, sat thinking by a plot that had grown yellow flowers to blanket Billy in his eternal sleep. And maybe it was those small visits sheltered between morning runs and eight hour shifts stocking the horror section that Billy had come back.

From the grave. From the brink.

The Earth started vibrating, spidery cracks turning volatile, and Steve was met with ocean blue. Red rimmed eyes locked on his face, hands reaching and gripping. Nails digging in as Steve wrapped Billy's grime covered shoulders in his own jacket. Rubbed the chilled skin of his arms, looked in his eyes, and took him home.

Someplace Billy could wash the day from his skin.

--

The blonde haired boy who had turned from human to creature and back again deserved something more than what he was left with. He deserved warm meals, and sunshine on his skin, and soft bed sheets that opened like a celestial sky when Billy felt like shelving the enormity of what he had discovered. What waited after death.

Steve wanted that for him.

Not happiness, not closure, exactly, but something close to it.

At the root of it all, Steve knew Billy should feel safe. Welcome and warm and comfortable, in the house that Steve’s father had built for his mother all those years ago when she was plump and round with child. Steve felt like his father that day as he carried the last box over the threshold and took in the rigid, tense line of Billy’s shoulders.

He let the moment rest. Let it breathe, as his father always instructed. “Do you think you could feel safe here, Billy?”

The air sat heavy. Cold and wet and warm, somehow, like the morning after a night of heavy rain. Billy sucked in a sharp breath and pivoted slowly, face reverent, as if standing barefoot in a cathedral among gods and heroes. Met with divinity.

Instead he got Steve.

Just Steve, trying not to stare at the lone curl hanging over Billy’s forehead when he offered a tight, controlled smile. “It’s fine.” Billy said, only.

Steve tore his eyes away. Focused on the second story banister to stop his gut from falling through the floor. ”Fine? As in, I would rather eat my own toenails than live here, fine or, like. It's okay, I don't mind it here, I might even like it someday, fine?"

Billy adjusted the strap across his shoulders. “It’s just what I expected it would be.”

Steve shook his head. “What’s that mean?”

"Relax, Harrington, it's." Billy turned again, eyebrows scrunched together. “Its. Pastel. And huge. Obscenely decorated—“

”My mom had it professionally done before they—“

”It was built for a happy family with lots of kids. Lots of love, but now it's. It feels. Lost.”

Billy had started saying things like that.

Heavy, saturated, impossible things that left Steve scrambling. Wishing for the intelligence to absorb the meaning rather than question it. Steve rested the box at the foot of the stairs and offered a smile to the second story. Runoff for the pools of blue that looked on.

"That's a lot of adjectives. I can get you a hotel, maybe. Or an apartment. I could cosign, I know they gave you a pretty penny and you could probably afford your own, but. I could. I would." Steve said harshly. "For you. I would."

"It's fine here. It's okay."

Steve felt like a science experiment. Egg boy with three heads and ten legs or something. Suckers on the tips of his thumbs, the way Billy studied him. Steve counted the freckles on Billy's nose--one, two, three, four--trying to stay afloat.

--

Dinner was made every night though Steve never saw it happen.

The cookbooks sat alphabetized over his mother's antique bar cart on that little periwinkle blue shelf. He'd come home, every night, at six on the dot, to a set table. The mixing bowls were always clean and put away, counters wiped and ingredients stored neatly on the shelves his pantry, but the wooden spoons spelled it out for Steve, still shifting from dark to light as they lay drying on the dish rack.

"You don't have to make dinner, you know." Steve took another bite of Salisbury steak, furious that it tasted so good. Like love soaking into his skin.

Billy shook his head. "I want to."

"I know, I'm saying it's okay if you decide not to, one day. Like if you get caught up reading. Or if you can get Max to drive you to the history museum, or if you--"

"It's the least I can do."

Steve hated that. He let his fork clatter to the table. "I'm not expecting repayment for this."

"I'm not a freeloader."

"And I'm not an asshole." Steve deadpanned, lifting a finger that sewed Billy's smug lips together. "Don't say it."

"Say what?"

"Whatever you were thinking, with that clever glint in your stupid blue eyes."

Billy cracked his knuckles, clearly fighting a smile. "Never thought you noticed the color of my eyes, Harrington."

"Yeah, sure." Steve stood, gathering the plates and forks and knives from the table, his own eyes counting primary threads. "Can see those things from space, Jesus." He finally looked up, at Billy's curiously pink face.

Pink lips, cheeks, nose.

Steve gripped ceramic. Swallowed against a swell of guilt. "You don't owe me anything, Billy. I like having you here. I want you here."

Billy gave a simple, controlled nod.

Steve got used to it.

--

The shack wasn't built until the doctor told Billy that he'd probably wouldn't remember all of what happened. The big things would stick out, neon greens and blues against the forest head, but Billy shouldn't be too hard on himself if the important things got thrown away.

And some of those jagged little pieces were there. The bad things. Anger and hatred, both for self and world, left hanging on the cliff of who he was now. Everything that had formed Billy Hargrove--the person he was, the person Steve had pretended not to notice--were packed away. Soft, silky emotion covering knives left dull and rusted in their drawer.

Billy remembered like flashes of lightening across the summer sky--sudden and then gone. Here and away. He remembered Hawkins high and Max who'd grown six inches in three years. Dustin who had been wearing that stupid shirt when the mall burned down.

And Steve.

Always Steve, sat next to him. A foot away at first and then holding his hand, later, when Owens said Billy should be kind to himself. Gentle.

He wasn't.

And he didn't come out of his room for three days after that, after the wall was placed in front of him. The crack under Billy's door always keeping Steve at bay. Trapped behind the starting line. He paced around on the carpet, lifting his fist and letting it fall again, never breaking up the silence.

Billy was crying.

Billy never cried, anymore, but he cried that night and Steve felt helpless. Pathetic and stupid and useless, locking himself in his father's study and trying to formulate a plan, just like Owens had told him to when the sun fell on a world without Billy Hargrove and then suddenly rose again, set anew.

Set crooked when Billy stormed from the hospital room, slamming doors that echoed like rolls of thunder in his wake.

Figure out a way to help him.

Sterile, eerie white walls stared back at him as Steve shrugged his shoulders on the third day, aluminum hospital chair groaning beneath his weight.

I'm not sure how to do that.

You don't have to do anything. Owens said. Just help him get the emotion out. Let him write, draw, sing, dance, whatever he needs to assist in telling us his story.

--

Potato casserole and red wine bore witness to Steve's leap of faith. Billy turned away from the novel he had tucked under his arm when Steve got home from work that day, eyes curious. "Spit it out, Harrington."

"I'm not sure what you--"

"You've been giving me the side eye since you got home." Billy turned the page in his book, still managing to read both it and the room as he urged, "Tell me what's wrong."

And nothing was wrong, and.

Everything was wrong. Steve leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Do you want to come with me to the art store tomorrow?"

Billy frowned. "I don't need anything from the art store."

"It's not always about what you need," Steve reasoned, patting his mouth with a napkin. "We could get stuff you want. That's all, just pretty things. Nice things. It could be a treat."

"Paper and scissors are considered a treat?" Billy cocked an eyebrow. "I do love touching shit, it's one of my favorite hobbies."

Steve scrubbed at his mouth, swallowing down against a big, fat, crooked smile dripping with affection. "C'mon, it'll be fun. We can get whatever you want; clay, oil pastels, acrylics--"

"I wanted to check out the library tomorrow."

"You go everyday, blue, you're a regular bookworm."

"So?" Billy demanded, taking another bite of casserole. "I like to read. Just 'cause you can't doesn't mean the rest of us have to hold back." He grinned, low and slow. "Don't let your jealousy turn you into a tyrannical landlord, pretty boy."

"God, you're the absolute worst."

Billy turned back to his novel. "The art store will just inspire me to paint nudies."

"So paint them." Steve challenged.

Bait. Hook and line.

"You gonna pose for me if I let you buy out the joint?"

Steve shrugged. "Maybe once, if you look at the easels while we're there."

"No shit?" Billy leaned forward, biceps flexing in his cutoff as he stuck a polaroid of a smiling blonde woman between the pages of his novel. "The fuck is this about, Harrington?"

"I'm worried."

"That you'll take me to a crafts store and I'll put you out of house and home? Reasonable concern, I guess."

"About the diagnosis, dipshit. About you." Steve gulped down the rest of his wine. Made sure every last drop had seasoned his words before any were said aloud, where they might do damage. He let the glass rest on the table between his fingertips, stem rolling from pad to pad. He took a deep, steadying breath. "You haven't been the same since--"

"I got hijacked by a space demon or crawled out of my own grave?" Billy shrugged, picking at something in his teeth. "Be more specific."

Steve fiddled with the handle of his fork. Hand picked his words. Refined the meaning. "Yes, and. Both."

Billy didn't say anything for a while and the room finally settled. Falling fast asleep, thick with inertia and silence until the book was opened once more and Steve went back to digging through his casserole, picking at the spring onions.

Letting the moment breathe.

Until, finally. "I feel like I could crawl out of my own skin."

Steve tripped over himself to get those blue eyes on him once more. "That's understandable--"

"I feel fucking useless." Billy snapped, voice cracking in two, and. Suddenly Steve couldn't look at him. Couldn't bare to see his face. "I'm trying to replay what happened. Every second, I'm trying to figure out why. Why me."

Steve counted the primary threads in the table cloth. One, two, three. "You can't go on asking yourself questions like that."

"I can do what I--"

"It wasn't your fault, Billy. Any of it."

"I'm not talking about the Fourth of July, I'm talking about. Death. I'm talk about what comes before and what comes after and how they're the same." Billy turned the page in his novel furiously, eyebrows scrunched together. "I never thought they'd be the same. It's like I've started over."

Steve couldn't possibly understand, but.

He watched pools of blue scan the page. Took measured breaths, never pushing until Billy was ready to share more. Until he tossed the book on the counter and sighed, head buried in his hands. "I don't understand how I got here."

"Easy," Steve whispered. "That's easy. You were born from love--"

"My parents aren't in love anymore."

"But they were, once." Steve shook his head. "When you were made. They loved each other, and they loved you, and your life was full of love that never made sound but it was still there." Steve willed Billy to look at him. Willed the skies to turn blue again.

They didn't.

Billy sighed, low and slow. "Did love bring me here again?"

"I guess so."

"Who's love?" Billy demanded, leaning forward into the table and crushing his novel where it lay against light oak tabletops. "Who loved me enough to bring me back here? To wish for me."

And.

There were a lot of things Steve wanted to say. Lines he wanted to map out, directions that lead from A to B and back again, but it didn't seem useful. Didn't rest important, as Steve took the novel from its place on the table and smoothed worn pages, tucking the polaroid in its place. "I'm sorry things feel weird for you." He said softly.

Billy grabbed the book, staring down at his casserole. "'S not so bad, I guess."

And, for Steve, that wasn't good enough.

--

Billy worked mostly in charcoal. He painted nightmares, and doorways into the past, delicate, swirling lines telling a story that made Steve's heart ache to see. To hear, with every drag of material across fruited canvas'.

Steve asked him about it, once. Over dinner, with the lights turned low. "Why do you paint such horrible things?"

And Billy had smiled. Bright and true. "How's that?"

"Y'know. Black scabs and eyeballs melting out of skulls and sliding down the ridge of people's faces, and--"

"It's what I see." Billy replied, voice soft. Measured. "It's what follows me around."

So Billy spent every hour locked in his shed, curls tucked over a growing body of work. Fingers turned rotten with charcoal soot as he made sense of what happened.

Steve liked to watch him work.

Liked to see the tension ease more and more from the strong shoulders that travelled beside him up the stairs each night. Steve felt the dig of each pencil in the crevice between his ribs when Billy finished masterpiece after masterpiece.

Still, it wasn't enough.

Along the ridges of creation, therapy lay half buried in the sand. It was state mandated, that Billy go and learn how to deal with the things charcoal couldn't straighten out for him. Like the nightmares, and the migraines that kept him from eating dinner at the table when June gave way to July.

Steve worried. Constantly, fervently, but Billy refused to go, always wiping his hands on the powder green apron Steve got for him at the art store, and insisting, "This is a form of therapy." Billy gestured around the room. To the mountains of loose sketch papers and half finished canvases that lay strewn across every surface. "This is how I cope."

And it was.

And it happened the same way every time.

Things got bad for him and Billy would disappear into his shed. Steve would come home from the office to find that his mother's prized Thomas Kincaid collection had been replaced by Billy's work. It was haunting. Sick and twisted and so, so beautiful.

He found himself standing and staring at it for hours, eyes tracing over the swirling lines of purgatory.

It made Steve feel helpless, but.

Still, Billy refused to go. Still, he buried himself in his work. Still, he painted himself into a hole.

The path toward recovery was littered with charcoal drawings until it wasn't.

Until Steve came home one afternoon to find Billy talking with a little boy who had his throat cut open.

[ncssian]

A Favor: Part Four

Nessian Modern AU

Masterlist

a/n: hey y'all. my new job has been draining the life out of me so i have very little energy left for writing, which is why these updates are taking so long. im still very passionate about this fic though, it just takes me more time to write :(

in other news, this chapter is saturated with descriptions of pain, both physical and emotional. i hated writing it but it was worth it.

***

Nesta, 14

Sometimes it all becomes too much. Feyre asking for help with homework and Elain begging for more money to go to the strip mall, and their dad ignoring them all as if they aren’t even there. Sometimes she wants to leave it all behind and pretend she isn’t anchored to three other people, wants to pretend she is a lone being in a lonely world.

When she needs to go away, she comes here.

Cherrywood House is quiet, as it always is this time of year. One of several expensive vacation homes in the Smokies, Cherrywood is Nesta’s favorite for a multitude of reasons— it’s empty for ten out of twelve months of the year, it’s the only house with a clear view of the nearby lake, and cherry blossoms bloom on trees out in the back every spring.

It’s early June, and she has a few more weeks left with the house until its owners return. The family that owns the place never leaves a trace of themselves behind when they leave each August, so Nesta returns the favor by never leaving hints of her inhabitance either.

She takes her worn Converse and socks off at the back porch and climbs in through the unlocked window barefoot. This is where she belongs. A ghost roaming the empty halls, with no one to care for and no one to care for her.

She makes her way upstairs to her preferred hideout spot: an airy bedroom with a bay window seat that looks out onto the cherry blossom trees outside. Cracking the window open to let the fragrance of flowers in, she settles into the bench seat with her book of the week and starts reading.

Absorbed in dreams of deep love and deeper kisses, Nesta doesn't notice the sun going down until she can barely make out the words on the page before her. Glancing up with sore eyes, she realizes she needs to leave soon if she doesn't want to take the wooded path back home in the dark.

“Damn,” she sighs, but she gets up and shuts the window firmly.

She keeps her nose in her book all the way down the hall and down the stairs, and doesn't sense anything off until a large shadow flashes in the corner of her eye. Her head whips up, and the face that greets her looks just as surprised as she is.

Nesta freezes.

“Um,” the guy says. He’s maybe a few years older than her, seventeen or eighteen, and tall with shaggy dark hair. The front door of the house is still cracked open behind him. “What the fuck?”

Nesta unfreezes. And then she runs.

All the way through the main hall and to the back door, while the boy’s shouts chase her through the house. “Hey, wait up!”

They weren't supposed to be here this early—

Her hand wraps around the back door handle and she flings it open, shoving through the second screen door and shooting right down the porch steps. Heavy steps behind her ignite a panic in her, and she gains a burst of speed.

“HEY!” he calls again. Soft grass becomes dirt and twigs beneath Nesta's feet, and she knows she's reached the tree line. Dark shadows fall over her as she darts into the safety of the woods.

Still standing on the back porch and waving a raggedy pair of Converse, Cassian tries calling for the girl one more time. “You forgot your shoes!”

Cassian wakes up at five in the morning to the sound of the house’s pipes creaking, a telltale sign that someone is using one of the faucets. Blinking his eyes open, he hears the distant sound of the shower running.

Who would get up in the freezing cold at this hour just to take a shower? He checks the time once more to make sure he isn't imagining things, and gets up to peek his head out of his bedroom. Sure enough, light leaks out from under the bathroom door.

Cassian walks up to the bathroom and listens closely for any sound beside running water. He knocks hesitantly. “Nesta?”

Her muffled voice calls back to him, but he can't make out a thing.

“Are you alright?” he asks. “How long have you been in there?”

There’s no response, and now he’s concerned. Raising his voice, he says, “I’m going to come in to hear you better, is that okay?”

A soft affirmative answers him, and he tries the doorknob. It’s already unlocked, which is odd, but he pokes his head into the steam-filled bathroom cautiously. “Nesta?”

From behind the curtain of the shower, a pale, tired face appears. She’s sitting on the floor of the tub, he realizes. “Hey,” she attempts a feeble smile at him.

Cassian fully enters the bathroom, the humidity dampening his skin. “Are you okay? When did you get up?”

“I’ve only been in here for an hour, maybe.” Her voice is weak enough that he has to move closer to hear her. “Don’t worry about your water bill. I’ll pay it, I swear.”

He shakes his head, confounded. “I don’t care about the water bill. You still haven’t told me if you’re okay.” He moves to crouch beside the bathtub, the opaque shower curtain the only barrier between them.

Nesta rolls her eyes, looking embarrassed. “It’s just cramps. I get really sick on my periods, and I would have warned you that they suck ass, but that would imply that my period could affect you. It doesn’t have to affect you— if you just leave me to myself for a few days, I won’t even be a bother.”

Cassian blinks, not really knowing where to start with that, so he just says, “But why the shower?”

Nesta shifts uncomfortably behind the curtain. “Sometimes hot water is the only thing that helps with the pain. I already tried getting out of the shower, but it hurt so bad— I had to go right back in. I’ll get out eventually, don’t worry.”

Cassian frowns. This all sounds incredibly worrying. “This is normal for you?”

She’s about to answer when her face pinches in a look of discomfort. “Cassian,” she says, strained.

He leans closer, wanting to help. “Yeah?”

“Get out.” She doesn't look like she has the energy to add anything else.

Cassian wants to defy Nesta and stay right there, but that would require arguing with her, and she clearly is no longer in the mood to hold up a conversation.

Reluctantly, he nods. “I’ll be right down the hall. Yell if you need anything.”

Nesta is already sinking lower into the tub, trying to get more fully under the burning hot spray. Her eyes drift closed and she hums in answer.

Cassian doesn't return to his room like he said he would, but heads downstairs instead. He spends a good ten minutes reading the drug labels of various painkillers from the medicine cabinet before carefully arranging a nonlethal cocktail of them on a tray. He adds a cold glass of water and various handpicked snacks before returning upstairs to set the tray by Nesta’s bedside, and turns the heat all the way up to combat the chill in her room, just in case.

Then he goes back to his room and waits. He tries to listen closely for the sound of the shower stopping, but he’s not used to being up this early on a Saturday, and his bed is so warm…

He falls asleep waiting.

***

Nesta stumbles out of the shower long after Cassian leaves her and downs a handful of pills without thinking too much about who left them for her. She already has an idea of how the next few days will go, and she just hopes Cassian will allow her the dignity to suffer through it alone.

She crawls into bed exhausted and shuts her eyes tight. The next time she opens them, sunlight is streaming weakly through the windows. Jarring pain lances through her abdomen, and she brings her legs all the way up to her chest and whimpers. From the edge of her consciousness, she notices the snack tray has been replaced with lunch— some leftover lasagna from the night before. Sneaking out her hand from her mountain of blankets, she goes for her phone. A text sent nearly an hour ago waits for her.

Cassian: please eat.

Nesta glares at the lasagna because she knows better. She might have spent this morning eyeing the bathroom tiles to determine if they were clean enough for her to curl up there and die, but she's not at a point to abandon her dignity just yet. The last thing her roiling nausea needs is solid food. Instead, she gathers the focus to text back Cassian: Leave me alone today.

It's only after she sends the message that she realizes it sounds harsh, but she can't bring herself to explain further or to soften her tone. Her pain always has a way of stripping her of any defenses and formalities and leaving only a primal creature behind.

Turning her phone off, she closes her eyes and inhales tightly through her nose. A wave of cramps that feels closer to what a brutal stabbing victim would feel like overtakes her, and— no, she has to get up.

During times like these, the bathroom is Nesta’s favorite place in the whole world. Cool tiles to rest her head on, hot water just a foot away, and a spacious tub if she ever feels like passing out. Heaven. Naturally, she escapes there first.

After maybe another hour of restless writhing and moving about, Nesta decides the suffering isn't worth it and hobbles downstairs in search of some Nyquil to knock her out. She’s got the medicine cabinet halfway open when a broad hand slams it back shut, and she turns to find Cassian standing behind her with a stern look. “You haven’t eaten anything all day. You can’t take meds on an empty stomach.”

Nesta wants to cry at the denial of pain relief, but she grips the counter behind her and manages a glare instead. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“I will absolutely tell you not to wreck your liver, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

A desperate whine escapes her, and she can’t believe Cassian has to see her like this. Even worse, she sees sympathy soften his face as his hand slips off the cabinet next to her head. “I made soup,” he offers. “Can you have soup?”

Nesta hesitates. Her insides don’t hate the idea of soup. She nods.

***

Nesta insisted on avoiding Cassian for the rest of the day, and Cassian graciously eased off her back once he knew she’d eaten. He kindly pretended he didn’t hear her running back and forth from the bathroom all day because she couldn’t sit still, and only interrupted her once to make sure she took more Tylenol before bed.

Now, long after night has fallen, Nesta is truly alone. Her medicine either hasn’t kicked in yet or isn’t strong enough to do its job tonight. She can barely think straight, and this is when the most primal part of herself comes out.

Despite her age, despite everything, she still cries. She cries as if anyone would bother listening, physical pain intertwining with the pain and humiliation of being ignored. “Papa,” she calls into her pillow, again and again.

She hasn’t trusted her papa in years, and yet she still expects him to rescue her. She still waits for him to show up and make everything better.

A hot tear leaks from her eye, and the catharsis of it distracts from her cramps. She curls up into a ball and cries harder, as if she can weep out everything that’s wrong with her body.

A soft knock interrupts her helpless whimpers, and Nesta hears the door open a moment later. “Nesta? Were you calling for me?”

Somebody came. No one’s ever come for her before.

A sigh of relief escapes her, and she forgets to put her walls up. “I’m just—” she tries to say, “so tired.”

She hears Cassian come farther into the room and curse. “Fuck, it’s an icebox in here.”

A hand nudges at her mound of comforters, giving Nesta’s shoulder a shake. “You should’ve told me the heater wasn’t working. Are you okay?”

That question sets her on edge. “Do I look okay?” her voice cracks. She wants to cry even harder now that he’s here, for some reason.

“Obviously not,” he mutters. “You’re staying in my room tonight. Get up.”

Nesta groans and burrows further into her freezing cocoon of sheets. “Don’twannamove.”

“It’s either that or I’m carrying you. I’m good either way.”

Nesta finally cracks her eyes open, glad that Cassian is only a tear-blurred figure in the dark. She doesn’t want to read whatever is on his face right now. Gathering her heavy comforter around herself, she gets up and lets Cassian lead her down the hall to his room.

Toasty warmth hits her as soon as she’s inside, and she makes an exhausted sound and drops the comforter. In a blur, she’s tucked into Cassian’s bed, enveloped by his scent and his lingering body heat on the sheets. Under the dim lamplight, Cassian seems to finally take notice of the tear tracks on her face. Clicking his tongue in sympathy and concern, he rubs his thumb over the sensitive skin under Nesta’s eyes. Her whole body shudders under the gentle touch. Who knew just the pad of his finger could combat this inescapable agony?

“This isn’t normal,” he murmurs. “I’m taking you to a doctor as soon as this storm clears.”

If Nesta was in the right state of mind, she’d tell him absolutely not. However, she’s barely comprehending his words as it is, so she watches him click the lamp off in silence. Darkness fills the room, but she can hear him moving.

“I’ll be right back,” his voice rumbles, and then she’s alone again. More tears leak at the feeling of abandonment. She’s so sick of herself.

After what feels like an eternity but is only a few minutes, she hears Cassian return. The mattress dips behind her as he climbs under the blankets with her, and then Nesta feels something hot and dry being pressed to her side. A towel. “Does this help?” he murmurs, his voice surprisingly close to her ear.

Wordlessly, Nesta reaches down and takes his hand holding the hot towel, dragging it beneath the hem of her sweater so the heat burns against her bare skin. She sighs and allows her tensed body to sag, leaning back into the hard cradle of Cassian’s chest and arms.

In her ear, Cassian’s breathing has gone shallow. His hand slips from her side, only to find her back and start rubbing up and down.

Her eyes flutter shut.

“My mother was a Muslim immigrant from Algeria,” Cassian whispers out of nowhere. “And whenever I felt sick as a little kid, I would crawl into her lap and she would rub my back just like this, and say some prayers and blow on my face, and I would feel better.”

Nesta makes a weak sound of acknowledgment. That sounds nice, nicer than anything she ever knew growing up.

“I’m sorry I don’t know any prayers,” Cassian says. Then, Nesta feels a whoosh of breath tickle the side of her face. “Does that help?”

It feels weirdly good, and Nesta's shoulders start shaking. She doesn't know if she's holding in a laugh or a sob. Cassian’s hand stills on her back. “Nesta?”

A sharp wave of pain sets her straight. After she breathes through it, she tells him, “You don't need to pray. Just… keep talking to me.”

His hand resumes drawing circles on her back. “Alright.” And he whispers stories into her ear for the rest of the night, until she's fallen asleep and long afterward.

The next morning, Nesta is feeling much better. Cassian knows this because she’s sitting in the living room when he comes downstairs, straight-backed instead of hunched over in pain, and she’s regained the energy to glare at him.

Cassian’s relief at seeing Nesta okay hesitates at that glare. He slows on the bottom step. “How’re you feeling, sweetheart?”

“Don't call me that.”

He blinks, not sure what he did wrong. Before he can ask, Nesta says, “You didn't listen to me.”

“Excuse me?” He strolls deeper into the living area.

“I told you to leave me alone while I'm on my period, and you didn't listen. You dragged me to your room and made me spend the night with you.”

“You were crying for help,” Cassian says in disbelief. “What was I supposed to do? Ignore you?”

“Yes.” She looks even angrier. “It’s humiliating for me to have you see me like that. It's humiliating to have my own family see me like that.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but you’re—” He almost says overreacting, but some deep instinct tells him that word won’t fly well with Nesta. “You’re wrong,” he decides. “Whatever you think I’m thinking of you after last night, you’re wrong.” Cassian has no problem going into caretaker mode for Nesta; it's his natural state of being most of the time anyway. Besides, last night was… a new experience for him. For a multitude of reasons. “You can't tell me you go through that every month and have never had anybody take care of you.”

“I haven't, and for good reason,” Nesta seethes. “You had no right to see me like that.”

Cassian leans on the arm of a chair and crosses his arms, considering her. “Have you ever seen a doctor about your period?”

“That’s none of your business,” she snaps. Here is the Nesta that Feyre is always talking about: quick to anger and always on the defense, to the point that she comes off as unreasonable. Nothing like the helpless woman in tears from just the night before.

It brings out a rougher side of Cassian, one that wants to nip and bite at her boundaries instead of letting her be comfortable all the time. “That’s no way to talk to someone who stayed up all night to wait on you hand and foot, you know.”

“Don’t you dare hold that against me.” Nesta’s voice is dangerously cold.

“I’m not holding it against you. I’m taking you to a doctor.”

“No.”

“I already made an appointment.”

“Cancel it.” Her voice is brittle and she’s now trembling with restrained rage. Cassian doesn’t know if it’s because he’s refusing to give her a choice or if she just really doesn’t like doctors. Either way, it doesn’t change how Nesta ran out of bed at four this morning to puke her soup up. If it wasn’t for all this snow, he would have dragged her ass to the ER by now.

“I don’t have health insurance,” Nesta admits when she sees that Cassian won’t back down. “And I’ve made it this far without any cause for concern; there’s no reason to go.”

“Then I’ll pay for it,” he says simply. Her lack of care for her health astounds and angers Cassian at the same time. How is it that nobody, not even her family, has looked at this woman before and said You’re not okay, do you need help? How many times has she cried in pain with no one to listen?

Nesta has now stood up and is turning red in the face. “Absolutely not. Stop it.”

“Stop what?” Cassian smirks and straightens up.

“I’m not going to the doctor,” she barks. “Cancel the appointment.”

“No.”

“DO IT!”

In that moment, Cassian sees it. He sees how beneath the adult manner and adult words, the carefully crafted facade of cool, there is an explosive, tantrum-prone child. And he’s about to reveal her for good.

“It’s this Wednesday. I hope you don't mind skipping class.”

An enraged shriek shatters the air in the room, and before Cassian can even be shocked Nesta is verbally pouncing on him, yelling, “How fucking dare you, you complete shithead—”

“Nesta.”

“You have no right to— You’re so useless, this is why I didn't want to stay with you, this is why I never talked to you—”

“Nest—”

“You egomaniacal manipulative bastard— just because you let me stay in your house doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do—”

“Damn it Nesta, can you just shut up and LISTEN TO ME FOR ONCE!”

Nesta freezes and blinks, taken aback. Cassian immediately snaps his mouth shut, wondering if he’s finally crossed that line he’s been so cautiously toeing this whole time.

He watches her face closely, looking for signs of upset— or worse, fear. She only says, “Fine.”

He’s confused. “Fine, what?”

“Fine, I’ll go to the doctor’s.” Just like that, her fight is gone and the facade is back in place. She sets her jaw, but a hint of surprise and newfound discovery lingers in her eyes. “But I’m not letting you pay for it. It’ll have to come out of my own pocket.” She doesn't look happy about that part.

Cassian wants to argue her, but he knows how to pick and choose his battles. For now, he’s just baffled that he demanded Nesta to do something, and she listened.

He raised his voice at her. God, he yelled at her in anger and she only blinked in response, and now she’s listening to him. What kind of sick alien shit is this?

***

a/n: i love talking about these characters so if you ever get sick of waiting for part 5 just shoot me an ask and ill gladly discuss nessian with you

tagging: @ladywitchling @sjm-things @thewayshedreamed @drielecarla @sensitiveillyrian @superspiritfestival @aliveahaahahafuck @cupcakey00 @sayosdreams @rainbowcheetah512 @claralady @thebluemartini @nessiantho @missing-merlin @duskandstarlight @lucy617 @sleeping-and-books @everything-that-i-love @awesomelena555 @julemmaes @wickedqueenoffantasy @poisonous-bloom @observationanxioustheorist @gisellefigue08 @courtofjurdan @theoverlyenthusiasticwriter @wolfiixxx

[sarahwroteathing]

ALRIGHT. I’M REQUESTING MY OWN DEATH. ‘it’s a remedy i knew. helps with your throat.’ With Steve please

I Love You Drabbles

When Steve wandered into the common room that morning, a hushed argument had broken out between Natasha, Clint, Sam, and Tony.

“Not a chance in hell. Last time I went in there while she was sick, she pelted me with cough drops!”

“Going into a sick person’s room in your full armor ‘because germs’ is the opposite of bedside manner, Tony. You had it coming,” Nat said, rolling her eyes.

“She’s not even sick. She was just scream-happy on that last mission. I don’t know why she keeps doing it when she knows this is the result,” Clint mumbled around the rim of his coffee cup, eyes still closed.

“If your screams could knock people out, you’d do it all the damn time. Missions or pranks.”

“True, but then I’d be too pleased with myself to mourn a sore throat.”

“I could call Parker. She wouldn’t hurt a minor, right?”

Steve frowned contemplatively, backing out of the room before anyone could drag him into the conversation. Still, chances of escaping Nat’s attention were slim to none, and she shot a wink at him over Tony’s shoulder. 

On his way to the elevator Steve checked his phone, but the last message he’d gotten from you was a “sweet dreams” four days ago. The time gap wasn’t a concern; you’d both been sent out on assignment. But you usually sent him the mute symbol emoji when you overworked your abilities, a subtle invitation that always brought him running walking at a reasonable pace to check on you. 

He always did his best to toe the line between friendship and concerned affection, and when the scheduling stars aligned you’d spend the whole day together, peacefully focusing on your own activities in comforting proximity. Sometimes you’d pass notes, and you’d elbow him reproachfully if he made you laugh. Steve had seven thoroughly ink-saturated pages folded up in the drawer of his bedside table. 

He’d never tried to address your sore throat or lost voice directly, knew you were deeply annoyed by the fact that your body hadn’t adapted to withstand the power it had. No one else’s attempts to bring you medicine had ended well, but Wanda’s tea offering had earned her a hug. Maybe there was something to that. 

If he was honest, Steve could really use a hug.

By the time he was knocking on your door with the warm mug in his hands, he was already second-guessing his decision. You still hadn’t messaged him. Maybe you didn’t want to see him. 

The door slid open before he could make his second strategic retreat of the day, and you greeted him with a curious smile. 

“Heard you saved everyone’s ass yesterday. Wanted to check on you.”

You mimed a haughty hair toss, smiling when Steve laughed. 

“So you’re fine then?”

You shrugged, eyes falling curiously to the cup in his hands. 

“Oh! Umm...  It’s a remedy I know. Helps with your throat. If you want.”

You took the mug tentatively and stepped to the side, nodding your head towards the inside of your apartment.

“I was just dropping it off! You don’t have to invite me in. I know you didn’t send the emoji thing.”

God, that sounded stupid coming out of his mouth. Judging by the little smirk curling your mouth, you agreed. With a sigh, you dug your phone out of your pocket and tapped at it for a few moments before replacing it. Steve’s phone gave a chime. 

“Well, fine. You don’t have to beg,” Steve joked weakly.

You rolled your eyes as he stepped past you, turning to follow him to the couch. He was pulling the notebook and pen from the end table drawer when you sat down. You claimed the pen, scrawling your first message while Steve balanced the pad of paper on his knee.

Dare I ask what’s in this? Because it looks like shoe polish.

“It’s molasses, butter, and hot water. My mom used to make it for me, but I’m not sure what the right ratio is. I did my best.” 

You eyed the dark liquid dubiously, the nervous look in Steve’s eyes doing nothing at all for your confidence. But the soft “I did my best” erased all possibility of you abstaining from quite possibly the least healthy home remedy you’d ever heard of.

With a deep breath, you went in for a sip. It wasn’t terrible, but your brain still registered it as something you probably shouldn’t be drinking. 

“You can tell me if it’s bad. It won’t hurt my feelings.”

You shook your head, offering him the cup and pointing at his lips. He took a cautious sip, his nose immediately scrunching in a way that elicited the closest thing to a laugh you could manage at the moment. The resulting burn had you knocking your shoulder against his in silent complaint. 

“Sorry.”

You leaned over to write again.

I think you flipped the water and molasses ratio, my friend. Any way I could convince you to pour this on a waffle?

You were joking, but Steve reached for his phone. Your curious expression dropped into one of fond exasperation as you watched him type “easy waffle recipe” into the search bar. 

I was kidding, Steve! 

He ignored you, scrolling thoughtfully through a list of recipes. Waving your hand in front of his face only made him smile, and trying to snatch his phone was equally ineffective. 

“Waffles would make you happy and give this cup of disaster a purpose. I want to try.”

You successfully stole his attention when you flung your arms around him in a tight hug. Steve was caught off-guard for a moment, his phone nearly slipping out of his hand before he set it down on the cushion and hugged you back. Unsatisfied with his barely-there touch, you squeezed him tighter, earning an exaggerated huff before he tightened his grip in return. 

He should have stayed quiet, enjoyed the moment, done literally anything but ask,

“Can I ask why didn’t you send the text? Before?”

You pulled back with a sigh, retrieving the paper which you’d accidentally knocked onto the floor. 

You just got back from a mission too. I wanted you to take care of yourself first and not worry about me. 

“I like worrying about you,” Steve argued.

You rolled your eyes, pushing at his shoulder again.

“I do. And spending time with you makes me feel better too.”

You eyed him carefully for a few minutes before holding up your pinky in question. 

“Yes, I promise,” he said with a fond smile.

After a few moments, you gave a contented nod and reached for his phone. And as the two of you reviewed waffle recipes online, leaning close with your head on his shoulder, Steve couldn’t help but feel that the rest of the team was really missing out on something. But that was fine with him. He didn’t feel much like sharing anyway. 

[equallyloyalandlethal]

Thiam Drabble #6

What’s Enough?

The air around Theo thickened as he stepped back from the hospital bed, hands curling into white-knuckled fists at his side. He hated being here. Everything was clinically sterile, but the sharp  smell and fear that couldn’t be washed out or masked just due to the sheer volume saturating every inch of the building. 

“I’m—I’m sorry. I'm not who you need,” he said, shaking his head again.

This whole situation was his fault. He knew it, and so did everyone else. Everyone except Liam. Stupid, infuriating, forgiving Liam who rivaled Scott’s tendency for seeing the better side of people. This should have finally woken Liam up enough for the wolf to tell him to fuck off and put the kibosh on whatever this thing was between them. Unfortunately, he overestimated the level of rationality he was capable of. That and and Liam’s engrained stubbornness far exceeded what Theo could talk around with the state his animals were in. 

The coyote was still screaming for blood, itching to track down the idiot who landed the blows and rend him limb from limb, while his wolf wanted nothing more than to plant himself next to Liam and not move again. They were ripping him in two in a way he hadn’t felt for a long time. Merging their desires wasn’t hard, most of the time. Survival was the coyote’s main instinct, which was easy enough to twist around when he needed to. The wolf was harder. Those instincts screamed about pack and connection louder than anything else. Before he was thrown in Hell he could manipulate it well enough. But since then… 

He huffed, dreaded the moment both of them got on the same page, what with his self-control reserves at an all time low.

"But you're who I want. Isn't that enough?” Liam’s question was so quiet, he wouldn’t have thought he had said it at all if he wasn’t in the room. 

 He shrank back a step, turning his head away as his eyes started to prickle. Where was the chimera that murdered his friends without a care, who schemed his way into a pack by breaking up a lifelong friendship? Hot tears gathered at the corner of his eyes, damn near burning his skin the longer he let them sit there. Wiping them away would mean acknowledging them, which he was not about to do. He had a reputation to maintain. 

“Theo scrunched his face, hating the sharp sourness  leeching into Liam’s scent, his chest clenched, like a vise-grip was tightening around, knowing he caused the hurt. “Besides, it’s not like I ever really belonged here anyway.”

“Wait.” Liam sat up so abruptly Theo cringed internally at the thought of how the stitches had to have pulled. “You’re leaving?”

The way his voice nearly broke, straining to get the words out before the pain and fear overtook the ability, made Theo flinch. This was supposed to keep Liam from being hurt, not make it worse. It’s all I’m good at, he grumped to himself, teeth grinding. It didn’t matter how much he changed in Hell, he would never be good or even good enough. Failure was the name of his game, and there was no changing it. 

 “Yes,” he said as he forced his head to turn and lifted his eyes.

Regret zinged through him as Liam met his gaze. Instead of the rough, volatile anger he was ready to battle against, he found soft brows and pained, glassy eyes. He took a breath to steady himself, only to be gut-punched by the sharp tang of Liam’s pain. 

Tears rolled down both their cheeks. 

“Theo, please—”

“You almost died because I’m a freak of nature, because I couldn’t step up, because I—” He grimaced as words caught in his throat, hating how it let him think about the words that nearly flew out of him. 

Silence stretched between them, grating at his nerves more than the tears he couldn’t stop. His wolf and coyote were howling in unison, damn near screaming their want for the human version of sunshine laying in the hospital bed. He couldn’t listen to them, not this time, not after the woods.

“The best thing I can do is leave,” he said, turning to the door.

“That’s absolute bullshit,” Liam snapped, the growl in his words making Theo stop and look back at him. “You’re afraid and you’re running the other direction, just like with the Ghost Riders.”

He bit at the inside of his lips, trying to stop himself from back sliding the small distance he had managed to put between them. The hurt puppy-dog eyes Liam was giving him were decidedly not helping his resolve in the slightest. 

“You put on a brave face, convincing everyone you’re happy on your own, but the truth is you’re terrified of any emotional connection.” Liam paused as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, wincing and letting out a near inaudible squeak.

“Get back in bed before Melissa tranqs you.” Theo meant to say it as a threat, but the awkward tightness in his throat made it sound more like he was pleading.

As usual, Liam threw caution to the wind, white-knuckling the bed as he stood, never dropping his eyes from Theo’s. “Do you even know what love feels like?”

He couldn’t stop the snarl that ripped from him as his eyes flashed gold. Of course he knew! That’s why this whole mess was killing him. If he didn’t, nothing would have changed. Everything he was now started with that stupid emotion.

“When would I have had the chance to learn about it, huh? Between them shoving needles in my arms and opening my chest over and over and over again? When they praised my initiative for tearing out a failing chimera’s throat for the first time with no prompting? After I lied to yet another kid they conned into their clutches and told them it’d all be okay, despite the stench of death leaking out along with their black blood?”

His heart tightened at the memory of the sweet little girl, too young and innocent for such a wretched end. It was the only time his sister’s heart roared to life in all his years with the Doctors. She was so gentle. Too much so. 

A roaring snarl ripped out of Theo as he shoved away her last moments, ignoring how his scar burned where her tiny fingers had grazed the skin. “I think I’m in love with you, but I’m not good enough. I never will be,” he said, turning away again. “And that sc—” He stumbled over the word, grinding his teeth, fighting against finishing the sentence. “It terrifies me, okay? It makes me shit bricks every time you go near a fight and paralyzes me when I think about losing you because I don’t want to go back to classic Theo but I don’t know how else I’d survive without you.” 

For a moment he stood there, frozen. Those words had barely been given shape as thoughts. They weren’t supposed to leap out so readily! He shrank back, arms cinched across his chest like he could hold himself together through sheer force of will as he fought against his shoulders rolling forward. 

He jerked back, claws and fangs dropping in a blink, as something touched his cheek. Luckily his head caught up in time to not rip through the already injured Liam standing right in front of him. Right in front, less than an arm’s length between them, with a soft smile he only ever saw once directed at someone that was definitely not him. 

“Li—”

“No talking. Just listen, okay?” Liam moved his thumb to sit on Theo’s lips, effectively silencing the chimera. “I don’t care what you think of yourself, you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. You came back from so much trauma, shit that most people won’t even experience a sliver of in their whole lives, and you’ve been trying to do better every single day since I brought you back. There’s not a person alive, or dead, that I could ever feel safer with or more in love with than you, Theo.”

One second stretched into two, silent except for their erratic heartbeats. For once, his head was as quiet as the room, no instincts screaming at him to act differently. Instead, his inner wolf was damn near purring, overjoyed at the warm hand on his cheek, and the coyote was begrudgingly admitting that it agreed with this turn of events. Of all the times for you two to agree, he huffed, slowly closing his eyes and leaning into Liam’s touch. 

Even he couldn’t argue how right it felt, but that didn’t mean his stomach knotted itself any less or the tremors in his hand subsided in the least. Letting positivity in had yet to end well for him or anyone else involved, and Liam was a positive in his life. The most positive thing, actually. The man was sunshine incarnate, just like that stupid princess movie he made them watch the other day. If whoever she was could help a shifty, no-good thief redeem themselves, maybe he could trust his sunshine to do the same.

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28894329

[suntrastar]

abstract: chapter 2

chapter 1!!  chapter 3!! you can also find this fic on ao3 :)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Artist!Reader

Summary: Wait- Bucky Barnes attends your art class? And you didn’t even recognize him?

Word Count: 7500 exactly. i am so lame.

Author’s note: hello!! when i was uploading ch 1 on here it never once crossed my mind that i should probably add ch 2 as well ... but oh well! it’s here now. hope u all like it. reblogs and likes and whatever else are very much appreciated. also i forgot to say last time- i paint a little but i am NOT a professional artist! i’m making all of this up as i go! if i’m wrong with something do NOT tell me. shh. but ok now enjoy!!

A blank canvas stands before you, as big as your torso and propped up on an easel. White, unmarked, clean- pristine and teeming with potential.

You hate it.

In your lap sits your sketchbook. Pages upon pages of rough, half-baked ideas, each more mediocre than the last. You thought that maybe you could churn something decent out if you came to your studio, soaked in enough of the atmosphere to coax out some sort of productivity.

Well, you were wrong. It’s the opposite- the empty canvas is slowing your thoughts down, muddling them together, disorienting you.

You stare at it for the better part of an hour, white searing into your vision, shoulders sagging with each passing minute.

There’s something there. You have something, a rough chunk of an idea in the back of your mind that could be great, but you can’t figure out what it is. And it’s not something you can just google- you can’t search up how to think a thought you haven’t had yet- so you sit on your own, unproductivity festering, oozing out like the orange from the skylights.

You’re not doing too well. The sun sets before it’s five, it’s Monday, you have a fifth adult class to teach, yesterday you only got to a third of your chores. It sucks- you should be better than this! Put-together, neat, confident, creative, actually able to do something.

You wallow freely, feeling no satisfaction when you reach forward and push the side of the canvas with one finger, tipping it off the easel and sending it clattering to the floor.

The warmth of the sun burns into your back. You don’t like wasting time like this, never have. Maybe you needed to, though, to help get you back on track.

You heave out a sigh and crack too many joints as you stand up, folding up your easel, picking up the dreaded canvas, shoving your sketchbook into your purse. The drawing pencils you set out on the table are neatly lined back up into their metal tin, the kneadable eraser kneaded for a few frustrating seconds before it’s put back as well.

You zip your coat all the way up to your chin. It’s still freezing outside, and the walk from your studio to the subway, from the subway to the other studio, is always a cold one.

***

At least you can move on from the watercolors.

Oil pastels! Still not a very desirable medium, but for today, you’ll take it. At least it’s saturated, at least you don’t have to worry about the whole thing coming apart with a spare drop of water. The way it stains your fingers and blends unpredictably is kind of charming, too.

You run through your demonstrations. You gesture to where the paper is located. You make a few suggestions for what people could draw: trees, landscapes, birds. Then you remember a box of handheld mirrors the studio owner keeps in one of the storage closets, and run over to get it.

“You can use them for self portraits,” you say, and then a particular man in the back scowls, and then you add that it’s optional.

But Steve takes two mirrors.

You don’t have time to analyze all of that. You walk around, offer a few words of advice. Shonna lays the preliminary sketch for a heron, and you’ve never seen grey and yellow look so nice together. Your favorite couple, Marcie and Ahmed, draw each other, but neither of them can draw. They laugh at themselves as they misshape each other’s noses, miscalculate the distance between each other’s eyes.

It’s cute. You stop at them and laugh a little, before continuing your round to the back of the room, to Steve and Bucky.

“Everything working out okay?” You say, while Steve frowns into a mirror.

“I feel kind of stuck-up doing this,” Steve says, and brings the mirror even closer to his face, right up to his eyes.

You laugh a little. “Don’t worry,” you say, and peer down at his sketch, which is already looking uncannily like him. “It looks just like you! You even got the nose right.”

Steve nods, still bothered by the apparent narcissism of this activity. He pulls a peach pastel from the set. “I guess,” he says, unconvinced, and streaks the pastel over the side of his drawn face, and you quietly marvel over how well he understands shadow. “Are you okay?”

The question catches you off guard.

“What?”

Steve sets his mirror down.

Next to him, Bucky glowers at you, like he wasn’t smiling at your bad jokes in the cafe, like, two days ago. He’s so vehement- you’re starting to think that you dreamt up the entire encounter.

“You look kind of stressed,” Steve says, and then winces. “Sorry. I didn't mean it like that.”

“It’s okay,” you say quickly, and hesitate for a second, before thinking what the hell, and deciding to just let it out. “I am stressed. I’m so stressed- Steve, I’m, like, this close to losing it.”

Steve’s eyebrows knit together. “What’s wrong?”

He’s so sincere. Always so nice, and you don't even care that Bucky’s glare deepens when you pull out the seat and sit down in it, because you are dying to tell someone.

“I have this show in the summer,” you say, and clench your hands, because just the thought of the show makes you want to wring your own neck, “but I still have no idea what to do. I mean, I do, but it’s like, I have point A and point B, but I don’t have the line connecting it. Does that make sense?”

“What are the points?” Steve asks, and takes up the mirror again, to analyze the lower portion of his face.

“Okay,” you say, and lean back in your seat, and maybe it’s a little unprofessional, but you’re cool enough that it really isn’t, “Point A is that I want everything to be busy. Lots of patterns and fabric and plants. Like, I don’t want there to be any resting space for your eyes, because that’s boring. And point B is that I want to use people- and this is where the problem comes in, because I don’t know what people to use.”

You’re talking kind of fast, but Steve seems to still be understanding what you’re saying.  “Why not?”

“Because I want it to be personal. For my previous stuff, I would just post ads on Instagram whenever I needed models, and take pictures of random people and paint them. But I don’t want to do that again, but I don’t know what I want to do. I want people to look at the people and say ‘wow, that’s personal,’ but I don't want them to be able to tell how personal it is. Like, personal at an arm’s length.

Steve stares at you like you have definitely lost it.

You pointedly don’t look at Bucky.

Then he reconsiders, and gives you a supportive little smile, and you can feel your stomach sinking further and further down.

“I don’t fully understand that,” he says, and reaches not for the orange or red pastel, but the pale blue one. “But I’m sure you’ll get it. Just give it some time.”

You watch him outline his chin, the left side of his nose, little strokes of his eyebrows. Blue and leaving little smears and flakes of color, and creating this swirling pattern with one of the streaks of peach, like ocean and sand upon each other, so pretty and bold.

“Thanks, Steve,” you say, and he grins into his mirror, still adding blue. It looks amazing. “Also, would you ever consider switching careers? The art world is missing out on you.”

He blushes.

“Use people you know.”

You and Steve turn fast to look at Bucky, still glaring. His red oil pastel, held tight in his gloved hand, looks ready to snap.

At least you’re sitting diagonally from him, instead of directly across. At least you don’t back down from looking him in the eye.

“For what?” you say, like you aren’t following, even though you are- you just have a feeling that he won’t tell you what he’s thinking unless you ask for it.

“For your painting thing,” he says. “Because it’s personal. To you.”

You stare at him like he’s crazy for a second or two, and he looks into his own mirror, set flat on the tabletop, without peering at his face. You glance over at his paper, at half a page full of perfectly identical red boxes, and realize that he’s drawing the ceiling panels.

Okay- lame.

But also, like, funny.

Then it starts to click.

“Wait,” you say, and you feel bashful, because he’s been listening to you this whole time, and in his silence he must have been thinking of you, and the thought of that is just too satisfying for you to let go of. He’s been thinking of you.

Or maybe he just wants you to leave.

“That works,” you say, and then you suddenly have the connecting line. “That works perfectly. It’s, like, not personal, but…”

“Familiar,” Bucky says, and you are half a red box away from leaning over the table and throwing yourself into his arms.

That’s exactly it.

“Thank you,” you say, and your brain is running a mile a minute, and he’s just staring at you. “Thank you so much. That’s exactly it, oh my god.”

You don’t even realize how far you’ve leaned over, hands balanced on the table, craning your head towards him. And you don’t even care- pieces are shifting and everything makes sense, and the weather outside isn’t cold, it’s beautiful! And this class is wonderful. Bucky himself is wonderful.

You float through the rest of the class. The clarity of your thoughts is jarring, the way you understand what you’re trying to do now. Flowers, fabric, and then you have an idea with a pair of earrings. You ache for a pen and sheet of paper to write it all down, but if you started doing it now, you don’t think you would be able to get up once the class ends.

Once, you smile at Bucky. He doesn’t return it- and you’re too in over your head to care.

***

He’s not genuinely interested.

This is a precaution. Bucky takes lots of precautions- he sleeps with weapons at his bedside, goes out with knives strapped to his body, always sweeps unfamiliar rooms before sitting, doesn’t tell anyone anything. This is just another thing thrown on top of his already exhausted routine, necessary to his safety and sanity and-

To his basic peace of mind.

He’s not a very good typer, so he asks JARVIS to look it all up instead, and transfer it to his overpriced, Stark-issued laptop.

There’s relief in that action itself- he tells JARVIS the wrong name twice, because that’s how personally disinterested he is. So disinterested that even something as simple as a name eludes him.

He doesn’t care.

The information gets transferred to his laptop. Bucky takes his time, carefully scanning the screen, preparing to tuck away anything concerning, for future reference.

There is a lot of information.

Articles- too many articles. Editorials, interviews, reviews. And pictures, and even videos, and he wonders if Steve ever brought this up to him, this level of renown that apparently you possess, and Bucky just wasn’t paying attention. But no, that couldn’t have been true- he’s been genetically enhanced to always be paying attention.

He’s a slow reader, and whenever the fonts are too small it gives him a headache, so rather than reading an article, he goes to the pictures tab.

Your art shows up first. He clicks on the picture to enlarge it, and it takes a long while for him to fully comprehend what he’s seeing.

A woman dancing with a cow in the background, a woman with butterflies on her eyelashes. Two men wearing crowns of pearls, but when he zooms in closer, they’re birds. A figure in a dress, wearing sleeves that resemble fish, with a halo of koi fish circling her head. Everything has to do with animals, and there’s so much movement, and he doesn’t like art, but he does have to admit that it’s all so pretty.

And there’s lots of yellow.

And as he scrolls further down, there’s pictures of you. In some, you stand with people who look ridiculously pretentious, with weird hair and odd clothes and thick-framed glasses. Other artists, he guesses, who have to let everyone know that they’re artists before they even open their mouths.

Then there’s pictures of just yourself. You, unsmiling next to a half-finished canvas, in the middle of twirling a paintbrush between your fingers. You, unsmiling in a white-walled photography studio. You, smiling while wearing a ridiculous sequined dress, which confuses him until he reads the description, and learns that the dress itself is an art installation.

It makes his head hurt.

He looks some more, even though he’s not really learning anything. Or maybe he is learning, just nothing concerning like he was hoping for. Something that would justify this search in the first place, but all he’s found is that you have pretentious colleagues and wear ridiculous dresses and deserve Steve’s admiration the way you’ve been receiving it.

Eventually, he coaxes himself into clicking a link. An article with a big publication, too big for just an art instructor- but you’re not just an art instructor. you’re, like, good. The article is an interview, which could have just been recorded and uploaded, but for some reason, it was transcribed and written in article format anyway.

The twenty-first century is stupid like that.

When it was written, you had just had your first solo exhibition, and it was more successful than anybody ever anticipated. The interview is meant to be a little off-the-wall, charmingly eccentric, asking about favorite foods and then your future aspirations in the same sequence, and then debating different colors and some political situation within the same question.

Bucky stumbles through a paragraph or two, not really comprehending anything but getting the gist, and his head hurts more, but he’s blissfully relieved of it all when Steve barges into his room without knocking.

He shuts his laptop screen so hard that the screen nearly cracks.

“Woah,” Steve says, and puts a hand up, but doesn’t take any steps back. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Bucky says, and stares at the laptop with fury, as if he’ll be able to close the tab that was still open through telekinesis alone.

“O-kay,” Steve says, totally unconvinced. He hoists the bag on his shoulder- his gear bag, with his supplies. He’s headed out for an indefinite period of time, anywhere between three days and two weeks. In the bag is his suit, in its patriotic spandex glory, his other supplies, bandages and a gun and a sketchbook.

To pass the time, if he gets bored on the flight.

“Are you leaving now?” Bucky asks.

Steve nods his head. “Yeah. Just came to say bye.”

“You mean see you later,” Bucky corrects, because those two things mean different things, and the difference is enough to matter to him.

“See you later,” Steve says, and he shifts, one massive wall of muscle leaning from one foot to the other. He’s uncertain of something- like Bucky can’t handle himself on his own.

He can handle himself.

Bucky lifts one silver hand and waves.

***

He doesn’t need to go.

Steve hasn’t returned, still somewhere in South America, away on a mission. It’s not like anyone is going to check, either, if he attends or not. It’s not like this is required, like he has some sort of moral or contractual obligation to show up.

Still, it’s become part of his routine, and deviating from routine makes his skin itch. As Monday strikes again, he slides into his seat in the art studio. At least he’s not too early; he doesn't know how he would be able to handle any pre-class conversation without Steve being there to do the actual conversating.

You start right on time. Always so prompt.

“We’re going to be working with oil pastels again,” you say, and make a big gesture with your hands. You wear chunky gold earrings that wink under the lights. “But I’m going to let you do whatever you want. Draw whatever. I’ve got out a few different types of paper, and some different tools for creating textures- I’ll show you all how to use them really quick.”

You scrape a sheet of paper hastily colored purple with something that looks like a plastic knife. Then you use something that looks like a plastic-toothed comb, and then some other pointy plastic objects to make lines and whirls on the paper. Texture. He watches the paper, some, but mostly you.

You look over at him two times. No more than you do at anyone else, but he still notices- as a precaution.

“Okay, I'm done. You all can get to work,” you say, and set the purple sheet down on your own table, at the front. “Have fun. Get crazy with it.”

Bucky looks down at the paper he’s set on the table, yellow-white and slightly textured. He looks at the oil pastels, sitting so dejectedly in their little cardboard dish, a product of low budget and disuse.

He takes the yellow one.

You come over to his table some time later, after getting to everyone else. He’s always last, he’s noticed- because he sits at the back, and because you like to take your time talking with Steve. But Steve isn’t here today, which means you won’t linger, which means he can continue on sitting in peace.

“How’s it going?” You ask. One of your hands comes to rest on top of the chair across from him.

“Your shoe is untied.”

Your smile falters as you look down, at your red sneaker- you wear hot red sneakers- but reaffirms itself a second later as you slide the chair out, and prop your foot up on it.

Bucky suddenly feels off. Your knee rests slightly above his head, and your head is tucked down but still looming high over him, cast in shadow. He’s beneath- under. And you’re double-knotting the laces of your shoe.

“Thanks,” you say, and it’s awkward to thank someone for something so little, but you don’t say it like it’s awkward. “I probably would’ve tripped on the laces. Anyways, again, how’s it going?”

He considers the question. “Fine.”

“Fine,” you repeat. You take your foot off the chair and tuck it back in, and then lean- loom even more- over him, looking over at his piece of paper.

He glares at you, even though you’re not looking at him.

“Wow,” you say, and your eyebrows are creasing, and he thinks that you’re struggling to come up with something to say, and after seeing those paintings online, he can’t even take offense at it. “Those lines are so… straight. How are they so straight?”

Because his metal hand has an internal stabilizer.

“They just are,” he says.

You look at him. Everything suddenly feels stuttered and slow, drenched in honey. He’s expecting some type of joke, and praying for the ground to open and swallow him up, bury him under six feet of tile. Has silence always been this unbearable?

“Awesome,” you say.

Then you look away and he’s able to breathe again, and you’re turning away, ready to flounce back over to someone else. He looks back down at his paper and picks up the pastel again, fingers pressing over the paper wrapper, so that he doesn’t get anything on his glove. He draws another straight line.

“Wait, one more thing.”

You turn around and his head snaps up, fully alarmed.

You take in his expression and look like you’re about to laugh. But you stifle it back, bite on your lip as you pull the chair back out again and sit down, across from him. Steve isn’t even here- Steve isn’t even your motivation for being here, today, and all he’s thinking about is you in that ridiculous art installation of a dress.

Floor-length. V-neck.

“So,” you say, and Bucky can’t look at you. In his peripheral vision he sees you curl your hands together, resting on top of the table. The glass on the watch flashes. “So, you know the idea that you gave me last week? With painting people I know? I started this painting of my mom- and all of these ideas in my head make sense to me now- wait. Let me show you, first.”

He keeps his eyes dutifully trained on his paper. Still, he can hear the smile in your voice as you pull your phone out of your back pocket, tapping away at something before turning the screen around for him to see.

Your arm is stretched all the way across the table. Bucky leans in a little bit, to see the picture you’ve pulled up.

A partially painted image of a woman that looks like you but not you, with almost the same face as you, but with hands mottled with age and a mouth starting to droop at the corners. Your mom, apparently, sitting with her hands clasped the way you’re clasping yours. She wears earrings that look like huge flowers, lilies, or something, and in a white dress that looks halfway like a swirled illusion.

“Nice,” he says, grudgingly, and you keep your hand outstretched. He wonders if you want him to take the phone from you, if you’re waiting for him to say more. “I like the dress.”

You beam at him. He’s been looking at you without realizing. “Thank you. I actually got the idea or the pattern from Steve- I’m just stealing ideas, aren’t I- but did you see the thing he did with his self-portrait last week? The swirls? It was so pretty- I couldn’t help myself. Anyways, where is he today?”

“Out of town.”

Dread curls at the pit of his stomach.

Bucky doesn’t know why, but he has the heavy, stone-cold realization that he does not want to be talking about Steve right now.

It must show, because you’re in the middle of opening your mouth to say something, and then abruptly close it.

“Oh,” you say, and you shift. He realizes that he doesn’t want you to leave yet, either. “Nice.”

You’re getting out of your seat. You must be feeling it too, the heaviness, the atmosphere so overwrought with polite dislike, because he still doesn’t like you, even though he knows your name now, but-

“What’s your next painting going to be?” he asks, so quickly that it comes off as a little frantic.

Your eyes widen and you’re carried back down, drifting back into your seat.

“I’m so glad you asked that,” you say, as you settle in. For a second, you’re frighteningly put together, shoulders straight, hands neatly folded, earrings glinting. “I’ve been wanting to tell someone about it so bad.”

You want your next painting to be of your dad. A portrait of just his face, close enough to add little, inconsequential details. You have this idea where you create patterns that look like flowers out of his wrinkles. He has teeth that are always yellow, because he drinks so much coffee, you say, a habit you’ve picked up, but you want to paint them almost neon, bring as much attention to it as you can. His hair is thinning and you want to make it all blue, like a receding tide.

It devolves, and his grip on the pastel loosens as you fall into something more and more jumbled, divulging other ideas you have, about things that aren’t directly related. You want to go big- much larger than life. A canvas as big as your body, just to paint a head. You make your own canvases, too, and you show him your palms, skin beneath your fingers raised and bumpy, with a ropy pink scar on your right hand. It’s from an incident with a saw, you say, even though you know your way around a saw. He almost wants to touch it.

Bucky thinks of his own right hand, with as many scars as it has lines. What does that mean, in terms of fate? He knows his way around a saw, too, and many other bigger, dangerous things, but you don’t know or don’t care about it. It devolves further, you sink lower in your seat, shoulders curving forward, and you’re telling him something else about nothing, and you aren’t minding that he’s mostly focused on just listening.

*

You’re laughing when someone behind you clears their throat.

You turn back, to see Shonna, looking uncomfortable as she fiddles with the strap of her purse.

“I’ve got to go,” she says, and, for whatever reason, gives you a look. “I finished my drawing, so I’m taking it with me. See you next week.”

“Have a good night!” You say, and cast a spare glance at your watch, to see how early she’s leaving.

She’s not leaving early.

You’re running nearly twelve minutes over.

“Oh my god,” you say, quietly, and pull away from Bucky. You have to pull this back together, quickly, you stand up and clear your throat.

“Hey, everybody,” you say, and so many people older than you turn to look at you, but the situation you’ve put yourself in doesn’t let you appreciate the thrill of it. “I wasn’t paying attention- we’re running past time. You all can go ahead and head out. I’ll clean up today. I’m sorry.”

Bucky is ignored, and it’s funny how quickly you’re able to slip away from him, him and unrelenting blue eyes and a stoic silence to bounce all of your thoughts off of. You keep your back to him and head back to the front of the room, standing and exchanging pleasantries as everyone heads out, apologizing with smiles and chastising yourself for being so careless.

Nobody berates you, though. You keep on expecting them to. There’s a sudden, sharp pain in the back of your neck. They all leave, and then it’s just you, standing by the entrance and staring at all the tables you have to clean, all the unfinished art projects you have to slide on the art racks, alongside the sticky poster-painted houses and clouds and corner-suns drawn by the kids in your Wednesday and Thursday classes.

All by yourself.

Or not.

Bucky lingers, putting his pastels back in the tray. He’s so silent that you missed him the first time, even though he was standing right there. Isn’t he some type of spy?

“Bucky, I got it,” you call. Without anyone in the room, it's like everything you just said to him didn’t happen. There’s no buffer and it’s just you and just him, and it's so empty. “You don’t have to clean up.”

Something in his gorgeous face shifts. You wish he was a little more expressive. His eyes hang dark underneath the brim of his dorky hat.

“I can help you,” he says, and adds, after an impossibly long second of hesitation, “I’ll make sure you don’t break any jars.”

You laugh out loud, but you’re confused. First listening to you talk on and on, now offering to help you and trying to make a joke- he doesn’t like you enough to be doing any of it. 

You know you like him, or at least find him intriguing enough to disregard his douchiness, but, like, still. Something’s off.

But then again, how do you deny him after that joke?

“Thank you,” you say, so formally, and you want to grimace. “That’s really nice of you.”

He blinks slowly, and you think that he’s going to smile, catch a ghost of it in his eyes.

It vanishes too fast, as he slides the cover back on the tray of sad oil pastels. You’re about to make some cynical comment about the lack of funding for the arts, just so there’s something to occupy all this new space between you and him, so you don’t accidentally lessen the space by doing something dumb, like moving closer to him.

“Where do I put these?” He asks, holding the sad tray up.

***

Steve returns for the seventh Monday class! You’re so happy when he walks in through the doors, abandoning your stacks of paper and speed-walking toward with a smile and a bouquet of paintbrushes.

“Hey, Steve!” you say, and he spooks, a little, but relaxes when he sees it’s you. No Rina today- she’s been leaving early lately. Maybe there’s some residual fear in her, just from that stare she was subjected to, all those weeks ago. “It’s good to see you.”

You get those stares every week, multiple times an hour, are getting one right this second- she needs to get over it.

He smiles and comes further into the classroom, meeting you over one of the tables. “It’s good to see you, too. Sorry I missed class last week.”

You wave him off. “Don’t worry about it. Here, take these for a second.”

In his massive hands, the paintbrushes look silly. Like dandelion stems, but it’s Steve, so he holds them gingerly, at a distance, like the wood might snap if he applies even the tiniest bit of pressure.

It’s not a good thought that you have next- it’s a deplorable thought- but you wonder if all super-soldiers have hands like that.

Behind Steve, there’s Bucky, standing in his usual black ensemble and glower. You know, now, that if you asked him to help, he would, but your mouth suddenly goes gummy and you trail off to the shelves instead, talking yourself up as you try to find a container for the brushes.

There, on the top shelf. How did it get all the way up there? You swipe it off and turn around, cheery and hopefully composed enough to not let any of your deplorable thoughts slip, and-

He’s there.

Not there, not all up in your face the way you would not want him to be, but closer, next to Steve instead of behind. His cheeks are rosy. You look out the window, to see if it looks cold. His face is pink, but he looks cold. Winter Soldier. You’re running hot, hot, hot.

“Hey,” You say, and politely smile, like while cleaning up last week, you didn’t spend an extra twenty minutes just talking to him.

“Hey,” he says, and does nothing, like the impassive brick he always is.

God.

You can’t be like this. This isn’t… it’s not cute. It’s embarrassing.

“Help me find the palettes,” you tell him, and place the container on the table for Steve. “I’ve been looking for them, for, like, ten minutes, and I can’t find them. And we’re painting today, so we need palettes.”

Steve dumps the brushes into the container. Bucky nods. He understands the importance of the palettes.

“Okay,” he says, and in the time it takes you to turn back to the shelves, he’s already standing behind you, surveying the shelves with you. Steve is probably giving you a look- he and Bucky seem like the kind of friends that tell each other all of their feelings, paint each other’s nails and read each other's diaries- he probably knows what’s going on.

If he does, you would like for him to tell you. All you know is that you’re really liking this.

Bucky finds the box of palettes wedged in the back of one of the shelves, in between thick pads of watercolor paper and glass cases of craft knives.

“Thank you,” you say, as he hands the box to you, as his fingertips just barely brush against yours. “Thank you so much.”

You catch another ghost-smile. “You’re so welcome,” he says.

Behind Bucky’s back, Steve gawks at you in disbelief.

*

Acrylic paint- the love of your life.

“It’s best for me to just let you guys loose,” you say, in your spot at the front of the room. Even now, your hands are itching, humming with energy, humming for a paintbrush. “If you need help, ask me, of course, but it’s more fun to just try and see what you can do.”

That’s part of why you love it- for its ease. Quick-drying, not water-soluble once dried, saturated. What is there even to explain? That you apply it with a brush? That you can blend with it? All of that is, like, obvious. All of it can be learned from trial, and any error can just be painted over.

Expression is so simple, with acrylic paint.

It’s messier, too, but nobody’s perfect.

You walk around. Shonna sketches out more birds- finches, yellow and mid-flight. Marcie and Ahmed start by painting without sketching first- one going for a sunset, the other palm trees. Classic. You catch a few others, silhouettes, some flowers, some abstract paint splatters.

Then, of course, you head to the back.

Steve is something out. You can’t tell what it is, yet, but you know that it's going to be beautiful. It’s already beautiful. He looks up and gives you a wordless smile, then gets right back to work. One of his hands is splayed over the sheet of chipboard, the other drawing quick, light lines with his pencil.

You wish that you could give them canvas. But canvas is expensive, and again- funding is bad, and you want to save the few you’ve scrounged up for one of the later classes, when everyone is more confident in their abilities.

Bucky mixes paint on his palette. Red and… black.

“That’s a pretty color,” you say, nodding down at the sad maroon. He looks up at you and you ball your hands into fists, placing them on your hips, not because you put your hands on your hips, but because you feel like you should be doing that right now, with how he’s looking at you. Gutting you.

He acknowledges you with a nod, and goes back to mixing the colors. 

Good grief, how much more is he going to mix?

You’re suddenly searching your mind for something interesting to say.

It’s awkward, and you’re even more mad at yourself- how can you be awkward in your own class? You’re so off today. Even Steve is solely focused on his canvas, and you’re happy for it- he’s drawing and really getting into it, but now you have no reason to linger!

You stay, for another awkward, insufferable second, before moving on to somewhere else.

It’s whatever. You want to think about it, but you push it out because there’s so many more important things to consider- like the painting of your mom nearly finished in your studio, the sketched-out canvas of your father, the dozens of other little ideas pushing up through the cracks in your thoughts, like delightful weeds.

You want to paint Rina. If her hair is still red when you see her, you’ll draw her upside down with poppies, wearing whatever crazy outfit she wants. You want to paint another friend, who’s constantly travelling but might be in New York next month, draped in gold jewelry and marigolds. You might even- you might even draw a few people you don’t talk to anymore, or people you don’t talk to enough, draw them with pansies and chrysanthemums.

Flowers. First, you were fixated on animals, but now it’s flowers- but it’s wholly unsymbolic, because symbolism gets trite, and you just want to make something that looks pretty.

Nobody asks you for help. Acrylic is fun like that- it’s a medium where you can help yourself.  The class gets loud- lively, even, and you just sit in your chair at your table and take it all in.

Bucky, in the far back, works on his painting with concentration that rivals Steve’s. You look for too long.

He can probably feel your eyes on him. You wonder if you should look him up, but that’s weird. Really weird, and what would you even search for? A Wikipedia article? Pictures? An interview?

Maybe you should, but you like the hot-and-cold mystery just how it is.

*

The class ends on time. You’re extra vigilant today, showing people how to lay their paintings on the drying racks, showing them where to dump their paint water.

You say that you’ll wash the brushes. Bucky can tell that you don’t trust anyone else to do it properly. You say that you’ll wipe down the tables, too, and you’ll move all the supplies back to the shelves. All you want is for everyone to put their paintings away and wash their palettes.

The work is done, and everyone files out, spurred by you wishing them all a good week. Steve lingers, as usual, and Bucky follows behind him.

You didn’t talk to him that much, today.

“Did you figure out your painting yet?” Steve asks.

“I did,” you say, and tell him exactly what you told Bucky, but more clearly, more well-articulated.

And less… elaborate. No talking about the idea for the second painting, no mentions of the canvases you make yourself. You don’t show him your palm.

Steve chats with you for a few minutes, until the conversation fizzles out. He shifts his shoulders and tells you he’s going to go.

“Have a good week,” you say, smiling, looking back at Bucky.

Steve gets to the doorway, and Bucky stays right where he is, and his stomach does a flip, because he can’t believe that he’s really going to be doing this.

“You coming, Buck?” Steve says.

“I’m going to stay back for a minute,” Bucky says, while looking at you.

He’s not a confident person, but he’s also not not confident. He just does what he has to do, without thinking, without sitting on it long enough for it to morph into anxiety, because when you've been impassive for seventy years, it’s hard to turn the faucet back on. 

Right now, though, he might be getting what they call butterflies.

“Why, is there something you-”

Steve cuts himself off. He understands.

“Nevermind,” he says, backtracking. “Okay. See you later.”

He leaves.

“What’s up?” You ask, as you head over to the sink. You’re so nonchalant, and he doesn’t know if he’s resenting it or grateful for it, so he just watches you pull cleaning supplies from the cabinet underneath.  “Are you here to help me clean up?”

No, but he’ll do it, if...

“Yeah.”

You reach out and rip a wad of paper towels from the dispenser.

“Great,” you say, and he’s just thinking, No, this is not great. You hand him a spray bottle and the paper towels. “Wipe down the tables, please. I’m going to get started with these brushes.”

He starts to wipe down the tables.

You get the sink running.

The streaks of paint on the tables haven't dried yet, so it all comes off with no effort. He gets through it all pretty quickly, one table after another.

Then he’s at your shoulder, tossing the wad of paper towels in the trash, setting the spray bottle precariously on the sink’s edge, since your legs are in front of the cabinet.

What else could he do? Sweep? Turn off the lights? He doesn’t know if you would trust him to do either of those things. He could close the blinds, but the sky is in transition, from grey to blue to ink, and he likes the way the dark seeps into the room.

It sets up the atmosphere.

You give him a quick smile, rub your thumb over the bristles of another brush. “That was fast.”

He shrugs.

It’s a dead conversation- he’s not used to this. Maybe he should be chatting you up, but he doesn’t chat people up, ever. You’re supposed to be the one that talks first, says something for him to go off of. He’s not good at this, but he suddenly wishes that he was.

“Cleaning brushes is such a painful process,” you say eventually, trying to sound exasperated, even though you’re  clearly not. “Takes forever- oh, wait. Not painful, paint-ful. Get it? ”

He gets it.

“You’re funny,” he says, and it’s not much, but it’s something. He wants to laugh but doesn't.

You add another brush to the growing pile of clean ones, laying on a bed of paper towels. The sink water drains slowly, dirty grey-brown.

“I know,” you say. “But anyways, I have a question.”

“What is it?”

“Is Bucky your real name?”

The fuck?

You’re genuinely asking, brows drawn close together. He wants to reach out and smoothen it. And also tug the strings of your apron loose, and hook a finger inside the hoop of your earring. He’s wanting to do lots of things- all crazy, irrational things.

“No,” he says, and he sounds weird saying it, when all that’s weird is you having asked in the first place. Your frame of reference for him is so poor- which is better for him, better for everything. It’s almost flattering. “It’s a nickname.”

You open your mouth for the next question, but he beats you to it.

“My real name is James.”

You abruptly look over at him in disbelief. “No way. Really?”

“Really.”

You’re on the last brush. You run it under the tap and the bristles send streams of purplish paint water over your fingers, and turn your head, looking over at him. He meets you back, glare icy, even though inside, he’s burning up.

“You don’t look like a James,” you say, and grin at him, and keep yourself looking at him as you finally shut off the sink.

He knows he doesn’t- that’s why he doesn’t go by it. But he’s going to indulge you, because he wants to.

“Don’t look much like a Bucky, either.”

“It’s a cute nickname, though,” you say suddenly.

His heart leaps to his throat.  

“You think it’s cute,” he says, and he shifts over and leans, against the wall, crossing his arms. He’s been standing too close, feels so unnaturally light. He can’t even pretend to dislike you anymore, not when you use the word cute to describe him, not when he likes it. Not when your name is rattling through his head over and over, a mile a minute.

“It’s so cute” you start, nodding along to yourself, “It’s like… nevermind. I don’t even remember what I was about to tell you. Can I get your number?”

That was not smooth.

At all.

But it still works, doesn’t it? You’re not trying too hard, so he doesn’t have to try too hard, either.

“Yeah,” he says, and smiles at you- and takes extra satisfaction in the way you light up. Yellow and radiant.

“Okay.” You wipe your hands down on your apron before pulling out your phone. Its case is glittery pink. The tips of your fingers have pruned.

Before, this would have all been so easy. Bucky could have you beside him the day he met you, turned you over in a whirlwind, in a flurry of milkshakes and dancing to music nobody listens to anymore. He wonders if he should miss you- and then tries to imagine you in a red lip, peroxided curls and a modest day dress, and gets the answer for himself.

He doesn’t miss it.

“Here,” you say, and hand him your phone, and he takes it immediately, he’s so over in his head.

He types his number in with his right hand. When he hands the phone back, the question is already burning in his mind.

“When will I hear from you?”

He shouldn't ask. But he needs to know, always needs to know things. Things can only be so irrational, it has to start making sense sometime- and anyways, it doesn’t seem to bother you. You stare at his number, type something in and put your phone away, and the whole time you’re grinning, and he realizes.

You’re pretty.

“Sometime.” you say, and you reach behind your back to untie the strings of your apron. As you bring the neck of it over your head, you wink.

Sometimes, parts of him still feel frozen, trapped in ice, like he wants to smile but can’t remember how, like he’s forever moving too slow, falling too far behind and below.

Right now, he’s all thawed out.

“You’re gonna keep me waiting like that?” He says, and he takes a daunting step forward, cocks his head to the side. He’s on autopilot, reacting on muscle memory alone- this is flirting, this is charming like it’s ‘38.

You nod, adopt a mock seriousness. “I am,” you say. “I like to keep a little bit of mystery.”

“Mystery girl.”

“You know it.”

His heartstrings loop over themselves, tying into in a double-knotted bow.

[grumpyhedgehogs]

(you taught me) the courage of stars pt. 2

Summary: “I know what it is like, Ahsoka.” Obi-Wan tells her. “I know what it is to leave the Jedi with nothing more than the clothes on your back and the knowledge that you are doing the right thing.”

Or: Ahsoka Tano flees after a warrant for her arrest is issued, but not before receiving aid from an unexpected ally. (Ahsoka proceeds to go on a road trip filled with a bunch of strangers who all say the same thing: Obi-Wan Kenobi is much more than he has ever appeared to be.)

Warnings: Canon typical violence, abuse (childhood, emotional, physical, mental), mind control.

Pt. 1, Pt. 3, AO3 

Nautical Twilight

The transparisteel doors to Dex’s Diner rattle in their frames when Ahsoka slaps her palms against them. The downpour thunders behind her, around her, soaking into her very bones and chilling her to her core. She can barely hear her own heartbeat over the rain. She throws most of her weight behind her next pounding strikes against the doors. Her lekku drip steadily; her eyes are still watering. Ahsoka can barely breathe--she’s been running, Force enhanced, for what feels like hours. Her lungs burn in her chest. A scream builds in her throat but she snaps her jaws shut against it. “Dex,” Ahsoka shouts instead, “Dex!”

She’s so dazed, so confused by the wind and rain and cold seeping into her skeleton that she doesn’t realize the transparisteel before her has disappeared; Ahsoka’s hand comes down only to meet air and for the second time in a single day, she stumbles, balance lost. Her heel skids in the puddle that has formed around her as she yelled, and Ahsoka reels. Stepping forward rather than throw herself backwards into the street, she only just manages to catch herself against the edge of a table.

There’s only one light on in the whole place, warm yellow glow spilling into the main dining area from the kitchen. The air is still, almost suffocating; nothing moves. Nothing breathes. For a second, her ears ringing, Ahsoka gasps, winded, in a world all her own. The Force curls unpleasantly around the edges of her mind, jerking her spine straight with fear.

Her breath heaves in her chest as Ahsoka looks up and locks eyes with a vaguely familiar Besalisk. “Help me,” she whispers, hoarse. Goosebumps stand out on her arms. Chills wrack through her.

“Sith hells, little Jedi,” Dexter Jettster says, half-shouting over the rain. The next second the doors slide closed, muffling the downpour. Sidling around the trail of puddles Ahsoka has left in her wake, Dex offers her a hand up. Panic makes her fingers tremble as the padawan takes it. One of Dex’s other hands offers her the dish towel from the man’s own shoulder. Ahsoka takes it and wipes her face; if, perhaps, she wrings a few tears out into the towel before handing it back, well, it was soiled with kitchen grease before she got her hands on it anyway.

With a great effort, Ahsoka looks up and sets her jaw. “I have to get off Coruscant.”

To his credit, Dex only gapes for a moment. Two hands rise to smooth over a wide forehead as he gestures toward the kitchen entrance. Ahsoka lets herself be herded into the kitchen, where Dex gestures for her to sit at a rough-hewn wood table in the corner. As she slide reluctantly into her seat, wet clothes sticking in uncomfortable places, Dex turns and, without missing a beat, begins rustling pots and pans around.  “Why would you come to me for that? Who are you, Jedi?”

“I am not a Jedi.” The words sting her throat.

Sharp eyes slide towards her face before flicking away. “Could’ve fooled me--wait, I know you, don’t I?” No matter the startled expression on her face, Dex steps back, looks her up and down and then snaps his fingers, four times over. “Yes, yes--you’re Kenobi’s whelp’s padawan, aren’t you? He’s shown me holos of you three!”

Ahsoka evades the question altogether. “He sent me to you--Kenobi. He said--”

She barely remembers what her grandmaster--ex-grandmaster--said in that tunnel. Her hearing has to be damaged, or her cognition going wonky, because there’s no way he just--told her where to go, how to run from the law. He did it so easily , like he’d prepared to let Ahsoka go a long time ago.

Maybe he did. Her stomach turns over. When the Besalisk offers her a plate full of warm food--how long has it been since she’s had more than war rations?--Ahsoka can barely look at it. She takes it anyway; the dishware is warm in her hands, which is enough for her. Her shivers grow stronger.

She almost doesn’t catch the concerned downturn of Dex’s lips before he turns his back. The diner owner huffs airily, moving to the sink as if he let disgraced former padawans hide in his kitchen every day. He lets the silence creep in on them until Ahsoka can barely stand it before speaking over his shoulder to her.

“Oh, well, if Kenobi sent you, that’s fine then. Force knows I owe him one for helping me get out of a scrape or two. It’s only right I do the same for him and his when the time comes. Speaking of which, he left some things--” Dex breaks off and scurries into a back room. Around Dex's broad frame, Ahsoka glimpses an office, folders and files piled up on a dingy desk, cabinets filled to bursting with flimsiplasts of varying sizes. Dex picks his way between the stacks, perfectly at home, and returns holding a file above his head in triumph. Ahsoka nearly jumps out of her skin when he slaps them down in front of her. “Here we are!”

Tentative, Ahsoka opens the files--only to be confronted with her own face. Through the mind numbing confusion, she realizes it’s a Coruscant identification form; one that the Jedi Temple never issued to her. There isn’t any mention of the Temple anywhere on the document as she scans it.  Ahsoka flips through the pages only to find another I.D., this one for Naboo--and one for a planet she faintly remembers from her navigation classes, Gala, and one for a place she’s never heard of, Melidaan--there’s even one for the Mandalorian sector, although that one has the most travel restrictions than any of the others.

These documents would allow her to travel almost all over the Inner Rim, and to quite a few places in the Outer Rim to boot. Ahsoka rifles through the papers faster, something great and terrible building in her chest. The dates go back years--almost all the way up to the exact date she was assigned to Skyguy.

“What is this?”

“Obi-Wan asked me to make them for you. Skywalker’s are in there too; I had to update his more often, of course, because he’s been with Obi-Wan longer.” Dex gives an awkward little laugh and points to the section that does indeed reveal itself to hold documents with Skyguy’s name on them. “Kenobi sent me some pretty cute kid pictures of your Master if you want to see.”

Ahsoka very much does not want to see.

“Why--why do you have these? Why did Master Obi-Wan ask for these?” She doesn’t realize her grip has tightened on the flimsis until Dex gingerly pulls them from her hands. He smooths them out against the surface of the table before looking up into her eyes. Ahsoka swallows at his deadened expression.

“Something happened to you.” Dex says lowly. “Something that took you away from the Temple, from the Jedi. You aren’t going back. Yes?”

Mute, Ahsoka nods. That terrible thing inside of her screams and it makes her limbs tremble. The Force swirls and rises around her, her own personal storm.

Dex, too, nods. He slides her papers back to her and this time, Ahsoka handles them softly. They may be the final gift she ever receives from her grandmaster. “That’s what these are for. They’re your safety net; a way for you to go on without the Jedi. That’s why Obi-Wan asked for them, and why he sent you to me for them tonight.”

The words almost tumbling out of her mouth without permission, Ahsoka blurts, “He said he knew what it was like to leave the Jedi.”

Dex says nothing, shrugs when she eyes him across the table. He and Obi-Wan are close enough that he asked Dex to do this, that he sent Ahsoka to Dex when he knew she had nowhere left to turn--what does Dex know about Obi-Wan that she doesn’t? That Skyguy doesn’t?

I trusted Master Obi-Wan because he never  seemed like he had anything to hide, Ahsoka thinks foggily. How wrong have I really been?

Ahsoka’s throat closes. When it’s obvious she won’t get a straight answer, Dex sighs and rubs his forehead again. He leans back to survey her, chair groaning beneath his weight. “Kenobi’s pretty tight-lipped about it, kid, but he’s been through a lot. I would know; it’s how we met. He’s Jedi through and through, but the man knows there’s more to life than his Order. He knows that bantha fodder happens even to the best of people. He wanted to make sure that if there were ever a reason for you or his padawan to leave the Jedi, that you would be taken care of.”

“I--I didn’t know.” Ahsoka’s vision blurs yet again; the colors of her own holo on the top document--a travel identification card for Alderaan--smear before her eyes. “I didn’t know--what happened?”

Did Obi-Wan really not reject her only hours before? Did he really know how she felt at this moment, the devastation saturating the very marrow in her bones?

But if he did, why hadn’t he helped Ahsoka when he could have? Why hadn't he stopped all of this from happening to her?

“That’s not my story to tell.” Dex stands, and pushes her plate of food, now grown cold, to her elbow. “Eat, read, take a minute to yourself. And when you’re ready, I’ll have a place on a ship headed off planet ready for you. Do you know where you want to go?”

At her shake of the head, Dex hums. But then she remembers something, and digs in her pocket. She hopes the datachip wasn’t corrupted by all the rain. It seems mostly dry when she finally locates it and sets it out on the table with a small click. “Obi-Wan gave me this--said I could use it to find a safe place to go.”

Dex hums again and shuffles back towards his office. “Think I’ve got an old datapad you can use somewhere…”

An hour later Ahsoka huddles in the hold of a cargo ship with a borrowed cloak pulled over her head, a borrowed datapad on her knees and a decrypted list of unfamiliar names and locations in her possession. Obi-Wan’s gifted papers allowed her travel without a hitch, but she’d spied some Coruscant Guards on her way in, and Dex’s parting words ring in her head still.

“Be careful, little Jedi. Caution rules above all else in the underworld, and for now, you’re stuck down here with the rest of us.”

[renaerys]

PPG One-Shot: Blowing Off Steam (Brick/Blossom)

@carriedreamerx and @kiebs have been hard at work these last couple of days drawing some really pretty art over on IG for various of our collective fics (check out their IGs, the art is super gorgeous). Since I have the artistic skills of a rock, I thought I’d say thanks with some Reds fight-and-make-out fic! This is an excerpt from an upcoming multi-chapter fic that will feature the Punks along with the Girls and the Boys. Gist of it is they’ve all been warped to a different planet and are stuck in a weird, possibly haunted house as they try to find a way out of it with punches and problem solving and *gasp* teamwork. They’re all in their late 20s in this. In this excerpt, Brick and Blossom blow off a little steam and Berserk takes all the credit.

(Unbeta’d and subject to change when I get around to posting the actual multi-chapter fic itself.)

xxx

Blossom had never felt more discomfited by Berserk’s absence than her presence, but she felt it now across the table from Brick with no one else around to draw her wandering eye, or his. He shifted his weight in his chair. She stretched her neck. He took a sip of water. She cleared her throat.

After ten minutes of this, he slammed his book shut. “What is happening?”

Blossom fixed her gaze firmly on her book and the passage she’d re-read at least four times now without absorbing any of it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s taken you twenty minutes to read two pages.”

The knee-jerk urge to refute him tugged at her like a dog begging for table scraps, but she ignored it. He wasn’t wrong. “I guess I’m finding it hard to concentrate today.”

They watched each other across the long table, and it struck her just how red his eyes were even from afar: two burning pits fixed entirely on her. Unsettling, yet strangely warm. She thought about retiring early, but she wasn’t tired. In fact, she was having some trouble sitting still in her chair. Maybe a walk outside would do her good, or even a run. Maybe Buttercup was free and up for a spar. Just anything to get her body moving and her brain blanking before her thoughts burned a hole through her skull and exposed everything to him.

“Let’s go a round,” Brick said. The sound of his chair sliding over the tile screamed in the cavernous, quiet library.

“What?”

“I feel like I’m trying to crawl out of my own skin.” He flexed a fist, and red sparks spiderwebbed along his knuckles to the wrist eager for something to burn.

Blossom’s mouth went dry at the manifest threat of his power calling to her like old ghosts. She could retreat, provide some excuse, it had worked before. But no excuse came to her now, and under the table, her fingers curled around a mass of pastel power itching for a summoning. She rose from  her chair, books forgotten, and headed for the door. “We can’t have that,” she said.

He fell into step after her not a moment later and followed her down the hall and up the second floor balcony to the first challenge room. The house was quiet and empty tonight, its vaulted ceilings cold and distant. It was as though they were the only two people awake in this uncanny place.

It took everything Blossom had not to stop and wait for him to catch up. His eyes at her back gave off a singular heat, homing and hyper-focused. Perhaps years ago, she would have never entertained the thought of turning her back on someone so dangerous. Now, the thought of what she might invite if she faced him kept her squarely focused on her destination ahead.

“Ladies first,” Brick said directly behind her when they reached the challenge room. He grabbed the edge of the door and held it open for her.

Blossom looked anywhere but back at him and stepped over the threshold. The change of pressure entering the pocket dimension made her ears pop and the access band on her wrist heat with power. As before, the walls on all sides moved as concrete structures grew and shifted, sky scrapers blooming like flowers and withering to dust, only to sprout again elsewhere. Brick followed and closed the door behind them. Already disoriented, Blossom began to float as she adjusted to the altered gravity and tried to abandon the idea of up versus down.

“Restrictions?” Brick asked. He shed his red jacket, leaving him only in his matching pants and a form-fitting tank top.

Blossom very maturely averted her gaze lest he assume she was ogling him, of all the ludicrous notions. Steeling herself, she unzipped her own red jacket and tossed it aside to join his. “Since when can you afford to restrain yourself against me?”

His laughter, light and low, shivered her to the bone. “All right, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He was on her in a flash with a hard punch. Blossom blocked at the last second, but the force sent her crashing into concrete. She barely had time to cough when he came at her again with another punch aimed at her face, but this time she dodged in the nick of time and it was his turn to eat rubble.

Adrenaline and Chemical X made for a heady, explosive cocktail in her veins that spread from her fingertips to the very ends of her long ponytail. Incandescent, pink power jumped over her bare arms as she poised to receive him again.

“Come on,” she said.

Brick glowed red, and it was her only warning before he rocketed after her. Blossom took off deeper into the maze of ever changing obstacles, the exertion only fueling her faster along in a familiar chase they had not run in years.

The pocket dimension was a death trap. Blossom darted over and under spikes and spires closing around her like jaws, her movements precise and fluid. But Brick was just as adept and wasted little energy swerving around the masticating mandible they had chosen for this evening’s playground.

Blossom swung around and under a sprouting obelisk, trusting her body to move exactly according to her will, but Brick abruptly changed course and met her mid-spin. Anticipating his sneak attack, Blossom let him have it with a wicked kick in the ribs.

Unfortunately, he was damn fast and grabbed her by the ankle just as her kick connected, and they both went flying with the force of her attack. A receding column broke Blossom’s fall with a rude crunch, and she broke Brick’s. Rose met red through a cloud of dust and electric Chemical X.

“Caught you,” he said.

Maybe it was the rush of the moment that drove her, the old thrill of the hunt from their heyday, never acknowledged but deeply felt. She felt him now, palms searing around her knee and pinning her neck, and she reached back.

Too close to avoid her open palm on his chest, Brick took her ice at point-blank range and blasted away in a flurry of snowflakes. He nearly hit a stone pillar punching out of the undulating wall, but managed to flip out of its path at the last second.

Blossom floated higher, her arms sleeved in ice and her breath misty. The temperature plummeted further as her power rippled through the pocket dimension. “Not quite,” she said in a voice that crept in between the shifting sky scrapers like hoarfrost.

Across from her, Brick’s power sluiced off him as thick as magma. He was a bright, burning star in this grey world, and god she could feel him pushing back and fighting for ground as if he were right in front of her. The chemically saturated air shimmered around him and ignited the blood in his eyes as they met hers. “Come here.”

It was all the encouragement she needed to give in to the timeless spark between them and unleash. Frost met fire as they collided, broke, and collided again. His punches smoldered, but her ice tempered them to cleansing smoke. And when she caught him in a freezing hold, he inevitably slipped through behind a veil of steam. Each unable to smother the other, they were evenly matched and forever at odds as they ricocheted off stone towers and toppled thrusting obelisks in their bid for dominance.

And that was what this was, what it had always been. Blossom had never felt the need to control and dominate another like she felt it fighting Brick. Call it fate, or design, or maybe it was just him, but there was nothing like this release, this honest surrender to the creature she was and always would be, made magnificent in the eyes of a true equal.

“I’m right here!” she taunted, with snowflakes in her hair.

Brick landed on a cracked block. The cement began to melt under the heat of his power where he crouched and captured her in those pyre-bright eyes. “Is that an invitation?” he shot back. “Or a threat?”

Alive with the thrill of unfettered competition, Blossom grinned. “Let’s find out.”

She took off at a punishing pace, half flying around the cement blocks and half skating over their frozen faces. Brick was right on her tail, his steps scorching the swaths of ice she left in her wake to cataclysmic ends. Wherever the two Supers’ extremities came into direct contact, the concrete collapsed and exploded like a parade of supernovas.

He was close, she could feel it, but he wouldn’t catch her, no way. Blossom was the best at what she did, and no one knew that better than her counterpart. But he was fast closing the distance between them, and when she chanced a glance back, there he was haloed in haze, his fire rising like great, golden chains, and he reached for her.

Blossom gasped, and it was her mistake. Brick caught her waist and pulled her back hard. The blizzard in her lungs went up in steam between his fingers clamped over her mouth. They hurtled together head over heels with Blossom kicking and jabbing with her elbows. But Brick locked her arms to her sides and anchored her to his chest until they came to a stop and she could hardly move. Pink power crackled on her skin as she thrashed in his arms, but he only laughed.

“That tickles,” he murmured.

Blossom immediately ceased her struggling. Immured in his arms with no chance of escaping unless he let her go, she became acutely aware of just how close they were. His breath was warm in her hair, and he smelled like smoke and parchment. He hadn’t loosened his hold around her at all.

“Brick,” she said, sotto voce.

He laughed again, low and husky. “Yield.”

The very word inspired an electric disdain in her. “No.”

He pressed his nose to her hair, and when he spoke his lips brushed against the side of her neck. “Are you sure?”

Blossom turned her head to look him in the eye and held on to her nerve out of sheer force of will. “Are you?”

This close, she could count his freckles and taste the heat he radiated, but there was no reading him beyond his singular and absolute focus on her.

He loosened his grip around her and pulled away. “No,” he said.

Blossom caught him before he could move away. Thoughtless perhaps, but Blossom never stopped thinking, not about their entrapment here, not about finding a way out, and not about him since the day they arrived in this strange place. She barely tugged at his shirt before he was on her again, arms around her waist and kissing her hard. Her fingers sparked with power as she threaded them through his short hair, making him groan, and he suddenly shoved them against the freezing, concrete wall until it cracked. His kiss was volcanic, as relentless as he was, and Blossom pulled him deeper with a smile.

The wall lurched at her back, and as quickly as it had begun, Brick ended the kiss and pushed her out of the way of a wicked spike just as it erupted from the enchanted wall. Blossom landed deftly on a nearby block and watched him do the same. Breathing hard, she wiped the traces of the best kiss of her life from her lips.

“Best two out of three,” he called to her.

Unable to resist, she smirked. “Restrictions?”

“You couldn’t restrain yourself against me if you tried.”

A retort sat poised on the tip of her tongue, but it still remembered his kiss and refused to cooperate.

“Blossom,” he said in a commanding tone that wanted answering.

Blossom’s power burst around her, radioactive, and she launched herself skyward. “Try and keep up.”

They spent the next two hours raining tempestuous ruin, on the pocket dimension and on each other.

xxx

Berserk took one look at Brick and Blossom when they returned to the Red Wing later that evening in their soot- and sleet-stained clothes, set her book down, and drained the rest of her bourbon. “Oh god.”

Brick rolled his eyes headed for his room. “There better be some of that left when I get out of the shower.”

Berserk flipped him the bird, which he returned behind his back before slamming the door.

Blossom hovered like a deer caught in the headlights until Berserk took pity on her and poured a fresh glass. “Here. You look like you need this more than I do.”

Blossom snapped out of it and took the offered bourbon automatically. “What?”

Jesus Christ.

You try to be nice for once, and nobody fucking appreciates it. Typical.

“Whatever.” Berserk went back to her book and her own glass of bourbon, which she topped off with the rest of the bottle so there would be none left for Brick.

Blossom didn’t fuck off to her own room like she ought to have, but instead sat down on the red sofa across from Berserk. She was smiling like a creep. Before Berserk could ask her if she needed medical assistance with whatever the hell was going on, Blossom said, “Cheers.”

Magenta eyes narrowed over the top of her book as Berserk studied her counterpart for any hint of a scheme. When she found none, she cautiously clinked her overfull glass to Blossom’s and drank.

They sat there in silence for a while. The sound of Brick’s shower was a low din behind his closed door as Berserk slowly flipped the pages of her book, some boring shit about this planet’s agricultural practices. Blossom had picked up a book of her own and curled up, her legs tucked under her in a perfect mirror to Berserk. Every once in a while Berserk would steal a glance at her counterpart and find her quiet and content with her book and bourbon. Peaceful was not quite the right word for this weirdly tranquil ambience, and Blossom for sure needed a shower. But, well…

Well.

“Thank you.”

It was so softly spoken, that had they not been reading in complete silence, Berserk may not have heard her speak. Blossom didn’t look up to acknowledge her sitting there, or even to check that Berserk had heard her.

Berserk curled a lock of her frizzy, red hair around her finger and buried her nose in her book. “Whatever.”

Blossom hid a smile behind her book and finished her drink.

xxx

Thanks for reading! <3

[mytwilightimagines13]

Amnesia (Book one, part fifteen)(Alec Volturi)

Maeryn sighed once more as she placed the brush back down onto the small table with mirror. Alec looked up from his book, his eyebrow slightly arched. “What is bothering you, amore mio?” he asked. “Nothing. Just slightly nervous for tomorrow I guess.”Maeryn said as she braided her hair. “Hmm.” Alec said before placing a bookmarker in between the pages of his book and closing it. He laid it onto the nightstand before opening his arms. “Come here, amore mio.” He said. Maeryn smiled gently and made her way towards him. Once she was close enough, Alec pulled her on top of him, her head resting on his chest, one of his arms wrapped tightly around her waist while the other hand played with her hair. Maeryn relaxed almost immediately. Alec just seemed to have that effect on her. He gently placed a kiss on her head. “Mia innocente la tua cantante.” He whispered softly against her hair. Maeryn smiled as she gently moved her head up and pecked his lips. Alec smirked as he pulled her head back and kissed her hungrily. Neither of them could get enough from each other’s touch, and their hunger grew more intense every day. But the two lovers restrained themselves, knowing it would be way too dangerous for Maeryn if Alec let his emotions go completely. And therefore, he pulled away leaving one more kiss on her lips before Maeryn placed her head back onto his chest. “How will tomorrow go, Alec?” she asked as she started to play with his Volturi necklace. Alec remained quiet for a while, while continuing to play with her hair. “It won’t be pleasant, amore mio.” “Tell me, please. I cannot seem to find any sleep and I would like to be prepared.” Alec sighed softly, contemplating whether or not he should tell his mate, as it might frighten her for the change. But, on the other hand, he had told her so much already of his world and nothing had scared her away yet. Not even the screams of the humans they would feast on once a week. “Very well then. As you know humans can be changed into vampires from another vampire's venomous bite, and vampire venom is nothing more than a deadly poison to animals. The transformation from human to vampire is the sharpest memory we have of our human life. Once a human is bitten, the venom from glands inside the vampire's mouth is injected into the bloodstream and will travel throughout the body to change every living cell. Depending upon how much venom is in the bloodstream, and how close the venom enters to the heart, the transformation could last anywhere from two to five days. During this time, the human will endure indescribable pain. Once the venom is injected, the best way I can describe the feeling is to it feeling like you are being burned alive. The venom will then make its way throughout the body. Next through the heart, and it will pump again and again in the heart until it starts meeting itself in the veins. Then it will burn all the veins until the heart stops beating. It moves slower than blood because it is thicker, which makes the transformation long-lasting. Each beat of the heart can only push it so far. The changing process is slow. The venom has to saturate every cell in the body before the process can be completed. But I promise, I will be with you through it all. I won’t leave your side, not even once. I want to be the first thing you see.” He finished as he send Maeryn a playful wink. Maeryn chuckled but was also back in her thoughts. She knew it would be painful, but it was a bitter pill to swallow for her new and eternal life. As her thoughts drifted further away, and Alec’s soothing hand played with her hair, Maeryn finally drifted off into a deep sleep. Her last sleep. Maeryn looked at herself in the mirror as Jane braided her hair in a difficult yet seemingly simple braid that laid ontop of her curly and loose hair. Maeryn’s heart had been beating a lot quicker than usual today, as if it knew that it’s days were over. As if her heart knew that the venom of a vampire would soon consume it. Forcing it to pump vampire venom through her veins instead of blood. Her heart was preparing for the fight it and Maeryn would fight soon. Oh, how brave her heart was, even though Maeryn knew it would lose. “There, all ready.” Jane said, breaking through Maeryn’s train of thoughts. Maeryn smiled at Jane, but her smile was unsteady and nervous. “Everything will be fine, I promise. It will be over before you know it.” She said as she carefully embraced Maeryn in a sisterly way. Maeryn returned the embrace before Jane pulled away, eyes slightly darker. “Now, go on. Alec is waiting in his room. His bed is a lot bigger, so hopefully it will make the experience a lot more comfortable.” Jane said. Maeryn nodded her head in agreement and walked towards the door. “I guess I will see you in my new life.” Maeryn said, kinda joking. Jane smiled reassuring. “I cannot wait.” Maeryn returned the smiled and made her way towards Alec’s room. She gently knocked on his door and he opened quickly. Alec smiled but seemed as nervous as she was. He pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her neck and placing his lips against her beating vein in her neck. Maeryn closed her eyes and took in his coldness. The coldness of his skin she would soon crave to feel once more. Alec smiled gently. “Are you ready, amore mio?” he asked. “Yes.” Maeryn whispered. She was so nervous, and was afraid if she said anything else, she might vomit. Alec guided her towards his bed and gently laid her down. He carefully crawled ontop of her, making sure none of his weight would push down onto her. His cold lips found her warm ones, claiming them in a loving kiss, and a hungry kiss. Slowly, Alec’s lips left hers and they left a trail of soft kisses down to her neck. He gently sucked on her soft spot, earning him a small sigh in loving agony. Alec smirked before nibbling, his fangs grazing her flawless skin. “Forgive me once more, amore mio. As I am a selfish man.” He whispered against her neck, but Maeryn barely registered what he had said as her head felt empty, as if she was high. But soon, reality hit her hard. Alec slowly sunk his fangs into her neck, letting the venom flow into her veins. Maeryn gasped. It felt quite warm actually. A nice and cosy warmth, like a fireplace you warm yourself up to after a long day in the coldness of winter. However, the warmth in Maeryn’s neck got more and more real, warmer and warmer. Hotter. The heat was so real it was hard to believe that she was imagining it. Hotter. Uncomfortable now. Too hot. Much, much too hot. Instead of warming up by the warm and cozy fireplace, she felt like she was trapped inside of one. Maeryn’s automatic reaction would be to crawl and fight her way away from the flames, but the heat wasn’t on the outside. The heat was inside her. The burning grew, rose and peaked and rose again until it surpassed anything she had ever felt. Maeryn felt the pulse behind the fire raging now in her chest and realized that the venom was flowing through her heart, into her veins. Maeryn wanted to raise her arms and claw her chest open and rip the heart from it, anything to get rid of this torture. But strong arms held hers down. “Don’t, amore mio. You can do it.” The soft voice of Alec could be heard, but even his soothing voice couldn’t relieve the pain she was feeling right now. The fire blazed hotter and Maeryn wanted to scream. To beg for someone to kill her right now, before she had to live one more second in this pain. But she couldn't move my lips. There was a weight pressing down on her. The weight of her body, she soon realized. So heavy. Burying her in the flames that were chewing their way out from Maeryn’s heart now, spreading with impossible pain through her shoulders and stomach, scalding their way up her throat, licking at her face. She wanted to scream more than ever, but she had to remain strong, for Alec. Maeryn’s mind was unbearably clear, sharpened by the fierce pain. All she wanted was to die. To never have been born. The whole of her existence did not outweigh this pain. Wasn't worth living through it for one more heartbeat. Let me die, let me die, let me die. That all that was on her mind. Please let me die. But she didn’t dare to say it outloud. She kept her mouth shut, apart from some sharp breaths she took, no sound came from her mouth. And, for a never-ending space, that was all there was. Just the fiery torture, and Maeryn’s soundless shrieks, pleading for death to come. Nothing else, not even time. So that made it infinite, with no beginning and no end. One infinite moment of pain. The only change came when suddenly, impossibly, Maeryn’s pain was doubled. The lower half of her body, was suddenly on fire, too. Maeryn could no longer hold it back as a scream escaped from her lips. “Shh. It’s alright, amore mio. It’s alright.” Alec said, he sounded pleading. He sounded guilty. But why would be guilty? It wasn’t his fault. It was the fire's fault. The fire made her in pain, made her want to die. Not him. The endless burn raged on. It could have been seconds or days, weeks or years, but, eventually, time came to mean something again. Two things happened together, grew from each other so that she didn't know which came first: time restarted and Maeryn got stronger. Though the fire did not decrease one tiny degree - in fact, Maeryn began to develop a new capacity for experiencing it, a new sensitivity to appreciate, separately, each blistering tongue of flame that licked through her veins, Maeryn discovered that she could think around it. She could remember why she was going through this pain. Why she would endure this agony of flames. She could remember, even though it felt impossible, there was a reason, a reward at the end of this ocean of flames. But right now, she had no clue what her reward might be. All she hoped for, was death. To anyone who was watching Maeryn, there would be no change. But for Maeryn, as she struggled to keep the screams and thrashing locked up inside her body, where they couldn't hurt anyone else, it felt like she had gone from being tied to the stake while she burned, to gripping that stake to hold herself in the fire. She had just enough strength to lie there unmoving while she was charred alive. However, Maeryn did notice the many changes that happened while her body was turning to ash from the inside. Her hearing got clearer and clearer, and she could count the frantic, pounding beats of her heart to mark the time. She could count the sharp breaths that gasped through her teeth as she hissed, yes hissed, in pain. She could count the low, even breaths that came from somewhere close beside her. Alec! Those where Alec’s breaths. Maeryn concentrated on them, as his breath was much slower than hers. They meant the most time passing. More even than a clock's pendulum, those breaths pulled her through the burning seconds toward the end. Maeryn’s strength continued to increase, her thoughts became clearer by the second. When new noises came, she could listen and registrate them. There were light footsteps, the whisper of air stirred by an opening door. The footsteps got closer, and Maeryn felt pressure against the inside of her wrist. However, she couldn't feel the coolness of the fingers. The fire blistered away every memory of cool that she had. "She is doing quite well. She has only screamed about ten times so far." The soft voice of Jane said. “Hm." Was all Alec said. “Everything will be alright brother. You knew this had to be done.” Jane said as she gently placed a hand onto her brother’s shoulder. Alec placed a hand over his sisters’ “I know. But it still pains me to hear her scream in pain.” He replied softly. Maeryn frowned but didn’t dare to open her mouth, knowing another scream would surely escape from her lips. "Listen to her heart, brother. Concentrate on that, everything will be over soon. It's quite strong, isn’t it? She will be perfect." Jane said. “I know. She always has been, I wouldn’t have expected anything else now.” Alec said. Jane giggled. "She must be in agony." Alec said slightly sad once more. “But she is strong, so she will be fine.” Jane reminded him. “Ti amo da impazzire, amore mio.” Alec whispered in Maeryn’s ear as he gently stroked her hair. Through all this, the racking fire went right on burning her from the inside. But there was so much space in her head now. Room to ponder their conversation, room to remember what had happened, room to look ahead to the future, with still endless room left over to suffer in. Also room to worry. How would she react to her own reflection? Will she be ruthless in her search for blood as a newborn? Ten thousand, nine hundred forty-three breaths later. How long? Couldn't someone atleast tell her for how much longer she had to lay in this ocean of flesh eating flames. Was that too much to ask? How many more seconds would she had burn? Ten thousand? Twenty? Another day - eighty-six thousand, four hundred? More than that? "She's going to be dazzling." Jane said.  Alec growled quietly. "She always has been." Jane snorted. "You know what I mean. Look at her." Alec, however, didn't answer, but Jane’s words gave Maeryn hope that maybe she didn't resemble the charcoal briquette she felt like. It seemed as if Maeryn must be just a pile of charred bones by now. Every cell in her body had been razed to ash. Maeryn heard Jane skip out of the room. She heard the swish of the fabric she moved, rubbing against itself. She heard the quiet buzz of the light hanging from the ceiling. She heard the faint wind brushing against the outside of the castle. She could hear the villagers of Volterra happily talking to eachother in Italian. She could hear everything. Downstairs, someone, Felix and Demetri, where playing a video game. She listened for more, but there was nothing but the game. The video game was not interesting enough to distract her from the pain, so she once more listened to Alec's breathing again, counting the seconds. Twenty-one thousand, nine hundred seventeen and a half seconds later, the pain changed. On the good-news side of things, it started to fade from her fingertips and toes. Fading slowly, but at least it was doing something new. This had to be it. The pain was on its way out... And then the bad news. The fire in her throat wasn't the same as before. She wasn't only on fire, but she was now parched, too. Dry as bone. So thirsty. Burning fire, and burning thirst… And the worst part of this all. The fire inside her heart had gotten even hotter. How was that possible? Her heartbeat,  which had been already too fast, picked up - the fire drove its rhythm to a new frantic pace. "Master Aro?" Alec called. His voice was low but clear. Maeryn knew that Aro would hear it, if he were in or near the castle. As a matter of fact, she knew the whole castle from the inside could hear it. And she too could hear them. The fire retreated from her palms, leaving them blissfully pain-free and cool. But it retreated to her heart, which blazed hot as the sun and beat at a furious new speed. Aro entered the room, Jane and Caius at his side. Their footsteps were so distinct, that Maeryn could even tell that Caius was on the right of Aro and Jane on his left, and Aro was a foot ahead of them both. "Listen." Alec told them. The loudest sound in the room was Maeryn’s frenzied heart, pounding to the rhythm of the fire. "Ah," Aro said. "It's almost over." Maeryn felt relieved at his words and was overshadowed by the excruciating pain in her heart. Her wrists were now free, though, and so where her ankles. The fire was totally extinguished there. "Soon," Jane agreed eagerly. “She is lovely. Immortality becomes her.” Aro said “Hopefully she can control her thirst quickly.” Caius said as he examined the girl. “I am sure she will, brother. Alec and Jane will take good care of her, as will the rest of the guard.” Aro said. The room went silent besides the jack-hammering of Maeryn’s heart as they all stopped breathing for a second in response. A hand squeezed her wayward fingers. "Maeryn? Amore mio?" Could she answer him without screaming? She considered it for a moment, and then the fire ripped hotter still through her chest, draining in from my elbows and knees. A scream once more escaped from her lips.  And then - oh! Her heart took off, beating like helicopter blades, the sound almost a single sustained note; it felt like it would grind through her ribs. The fire flared up in the center of Maeryn’s chest, sucking the last remnants of the flames from the rest of her body to fuel the most scorching blaze yet. The pain was enough to stun her, to break through her iron grip on the stake. She screamed once more. Her back arched, bowed as if the fire was dragging her upward by her heart. She allowed no other piece of her body to break rank as her torso slumped back to the bed. Maeryn tightly gripped the sheets and bit her lip hard, making sure to keep her screams locked behind her lips. It became a battle inside of her: her sprinting heart racing against the attacking fire. Both were losing. The fire was doomed, having consumed everything that was combustible; her heart galloped toward its last beat. The fire constricted, concentrating inside that one remaining human organ with a final, unbearable surge. The surge was answered by a deep, hollow-sounding thud. Maeryn’s heart stuttered twice, and then thudded quietly again just once more. There was no sound. No breathing. Not even Maeryn’s. For a moment, the absence of pain was all she could comprehend. And then Maeryn opened her now bright crimson eyes and gazed above her in wonder.

[buzzdixonwriter]

I've Told You A Million Times To Avoid Cliches Like The Plague

Recently a year old re-print of a 1959 Writer’s Digest article by Donald Westlake started circulating on social media.

First off, if you don’t know who Donald Westlake is, go find out.  You like rough edge crime stories, try his Parker books published under his Richard Stark pseudonym; you like funny crime, dig up the Dortmunder series under his own name; you like odd ball history, check out Under An English Heaven “being a true recital of the events leading up to and down from the British invasion of Anguilla on March 19th, 1969 in which no one was killed but many people were embarrassed.”

Second, Westlake was a serious writer in that he took the craft of writing Very Seriously indeed, no matter how light hearted and funny some of his books could be.  He wrote a blistering letter (later turned into an essay) in the fanzine Xero (starts on page 97) where he excoriated  the sci-fi field of the era as being neither artistically nor commercially viable.*

So who am I to challenge this master’s assertions?

Well, I take the craft of writing Very Seriously indeed myself, and to quote a late, lamented friend:  “Fools rush in, and there we are…”

The Writer’s Digest article is a mixed bag, partially a quick off-the-cuff job for a few bucks, partially a valid observation on pitfalls in writing popular fiction in September of 1959.

Bear the date in mind, it’s crucial to this discussion.

This was an era when Americans read a lot.  Millions of people subscribed to The Saturday Evening Post or dozens of other slick magazines (not to mention the digests, which are what the form the old genre pulps mutated into), and this meant each week dozens of new short stories or serialized novels were available to them (and that’s not counting non-fiction).

Westlake in 1959 was commenting on an over saturated market, one where too many writers and editors simply replayed old tropes over again and again because they knew a significant portion of their audience felt comfortable with them (this is particularly true in the slicks, more so than the digests).

Westlake divides his 36 plots into three groups:  Mysteries, science fiction, and slicks.

My first quibble lays in what Westlake means when he says “plot”.

From the original article:

“A plot is a planned series of connected events, building through conflict to a crisis and ending in a satisfactory conclusion. A formula is a particular plot which has become stale through over-use.

“My own working definition of plot is what I call “5C.” First, a character. Anybody at all, from Hemingway’s old man to Salinger’s teenager. Second, conflict. Something for that character to get upset about, and for the reader to get upset about through the character. Third, complications. If the story runs too smoothly, without any trouble for the character, the reader isn’t going to get awfully interested in what’s going on. Fourth, climax. The opposing forces in conflict are brought together. Like the fissionable material in an H-bomb and there’s an explosion. Fifth, conclusion. The result of the explosion is known, the conflict is over, the character has either won or lost, and there are no questions left unanswered.

“5C: Character. Conflict. Complications. Climax. Conclusion.”

All well and good, but in his article Westlake provides almost no examples of same.

To me, a plot is a quick summary of a story that lays out beginning, middle, and end:   G.I. Joe captures a Cobra secret weapon but doesn’t realize what it is.  Cobra needs to get the weapon back without alerting the Joes to its potential, and the Joes must figure out what Cobra is after before they can get their hands on it.

(There’s a lot you can do with that plot.  It can be a slam-bang action oriented story, a techno thriller, or a slapstick farce depending on your angle of attack.)

What Westlake presents are more along the lines of story springboards:  ”What would happen if…”

A lot of the situations Westlake presents are rife with potential: “John Smith is sitting in the park, feeding the other squirrels, when a beautiful girl runs up, kisses him, and whispers, ‘Pretend you know me.’”

Okay, let’s list the possibilities, shall we?

She’s being stalked by a creepy guy and needs protection…

She’s been hired to set Smith up for some reason…

She’s mentally disturbed from trauma in her past…

She’s a flipping psycho intending to kill Smith…

She’s a secret agent slipping a secret code in Smith’s pocket…

She’s a silly college girl doing this on a dare, unaware Smith is a serial killer…

Six stories right off the top of my head, and each one could be played in several different ways, from deadly serious to over the top farce.

That’s a lot of potential in a single trope.

Here’s another: “John Smith, private eye, is sitting at his desk, when Marshall Bigelow, thimble tycoon, trundles in waving thousand-dollar bills and shouting, ‘My daughter has disappeared!’”

Well, d’uh, isn’t that what private eyes do?  Find missing people?  Or uncover who committed a crime when people don’t want the police involved?  Or find out if a spouse is cheating?

Name a private eye story that doesn’t play off some variant of this.  From Murder, My Sweet to Harper to Shaft, hiring a private eye to find a missing person is a perfect way to get a story started.  “You find my Velma.”

Of the dozen story springboards he offers in his mystery section, none are unworkable, though two remain overly familiar to this day and probably are best avoided unless the writer can provide some incredible new spin.  

The science fiction section is more problematic, and here’s where I suspect Westlake was slumming (there ought to be an article on the type of articles one shouldn’t write for Writer’s Digest that includes articles like the one Westlake wrote).

Seven of the eleven clearly reference classics of the genre, and if this wasn’t a deliberate dig at those authors on Westlake’s part, one can only argue that while they may be shopworn now due to retreads by the untalented, these ideas remain strong enough to support a good story.

The other four remain headscratchers.  Two -- Adam & Eve and “atoms are tiny solar systems” -- are indeed hoary old ideas, burned off by EC comics earlier in the decade. 

I can’t say there weren’t thirteen year old aspiring sci-fi writers who submitted these to publishers and editors back in the day, but they seem more likely to have been found on the pages of fanzines (i.e., what sci-fi geeks had before the Internet) than a professional slush pile.

We know Westlake was active to some degree in sci-fi fandom of that era; could those two tropes have come from seeing those stories in the pages of amateur magazines?

The remaining two ideas represent a ribald attitude I don’t recall seeing in sci-fi digests of that era.

Oh, sex was starting to rear its beautiful head in science fiction, and there were a few cutting edge stories, but these two seem more like set ups for smutty fanfic, not genuine submissions of the time.

Again, something I’d expect to see in a fanzine, not a professional market.

Like I said, I think this tips off that Westlake is having us on, that this whole article came off the top of his head in a matter of minutes instead of being carefully thought out.

On the other hand, his critique of slick magazine fiction seems pretty spot on and devastating.

While he covers several sub-genres, his primary focus seems to be on stories written for a female audience, the type found in McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal.  He doesn’t come close to a dozen examples, however, as several (even those labeled as sub-examples) are just the same story springboard in different settings.

Two of his bad examples, however, stand out quite clearly as a dislike (whether personal / professional / aesthetic, I can’t tell) aimed at a specific series of stories found in The Saturday Evening Post, i.e., the Alexander Botts, tractor salesman stories of William Hazlett Upson.

One of Westlake’s verboten plots isn’t even a plot but a literary device: “Any story told in an exchange of letters”.  The other one that ties into Upson’s oeuvre is “Joe Doakes, a traveling salesman for a paper clip company, gets involved in some pretty unbelievable adventures in a small town in the Midwest. The other participants are a local belle and a salesman for a rival paper clip company.”

The two combined describe Upson’s Botts stories to a T.  The second one is richly ironic since Westlake eventually used the same basic premise for his Dortmunder series (the only change being Dortmunder is a thief, not a salesman; po-tay-to, po-tah-to).

Finally, Westlake left himself a huge out with “If you can take one of the 36 clichés listed above, and give it a brand new twist, so it doesn’t look like the same story any more, you may have a sale on your hands. If you search hard enough in the magazines on the stands today, you’ll find one or more of these variations currently in print.”

Look, I get it.  I’ve faced deadline doom before myself, and more than once have fired off a short piece that contained all the depth of a dixie cup.

This isn’t the worst writing advice I’ve seen, but it’s far from the best, and Westlake coulda and shoulda done better.

  © Buzz Dixon

   *  He wasn’t alone in his opinion, though ironically the 1960s proved to be one of the most fertile eras for the genre.  Yet Westlake and other writers such as John D. MacDonald, Frederic Brown, and John Jakes left sci-fi for other genres because it couldn’t support them either as artists or professionals.